Vaughn
Masculine · “little”
Vaughn is given to both — 21,364 boys and 1,120 girls since 1880. See Vaughn as a girl nameSee other names given to both
Vaughn began as a Welsh way of saying "the younger" — the word for small, tacked on to tell a son apart from a father who bore the same name. It hardened into one of the great surnames of the Welsh border country, crossed the Atlantic, and shed a letter along the way. One syllable, ending in that open "awn" sound, and it has been on American records for well over a century without ever going quiet.
How old is the name Vaughn?
Vaughn first appears in US birth records in 1881 — 144 years ago. The typical Vaughn alive today was born around 1970, making them about 55 years old. About 15,500 people named Vaughn are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Vaughn most popular?
Vaughn peaked in 1949, reaching #348 nationally. Today it ranks #1152, 804 places below that high. See the whole 1949 chart.
Vaughn appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From bychan to Vaughn
The story of Vaughn
The root is the Welsh adjective bychan, "small, little." In medieval Welsh naming practice it was attached after a man's given name — becoming fychan through soft mutation — to mark him as the younger or smaller of two people who shared a name. As hereditary surnames settled across Wales and the border counties, Fychan was anglicized to Vaughan and became a well-established family name there. Vaughn is the trimmed American spelling, and like many Welsh and Scottish surnames it made the ordinary move from last name to first name once it reached the United States.
Meaning
little, small — used to mean "the younger"
From Welsh bychan, "small"; in its mutated form fychan it followed a given name to distinguish a younger man from an older relative of the same name, much as "junior" does now.
How the name formed
- bychan
- Fychan
- Vaughan
- Vaughn
Related forms: Fychan · Vaughan · Vaughan
Pronouncing Vaughn
VAWN
One syllable, rhyming with lawn and dawn. The gh is silent. In parts of the country it can land close to "Von," which is worth knowing if you plan to pair it with a surname starting in a vowel.
Nicknames for Vaughn
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1881
- Most boys named
- 1948356 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #348reached in 1949
- Change vs 2022
- +4.0%183 in 2025, from 176
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Vaughn in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Fychan in Welsh — related form
- Vaughan in English — spelling variant
- Vaughan in English — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Vaughns among us
people named Vaughn are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 9,334 born in 2025 was named Vaughn
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Lavern test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Vaughn's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Lavern climbed just as high around 1924, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Lavern's path sketches the road Vaughn is walking now.
Vaughn sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Vaughn is headed
Vaughn should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Vaughn beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Vaughn in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- One syllable, spelled almost exactly as it sounds — most English speakers read it correctly on the first try.
- A documented line back to medieval Welsh naming, and a continuous presence in American records for well over a century.
- Familiar to nearly everyone as a surname, which means it is recognized without being commonplace as a first name.
- Complete on its own: it needs no shortening, so a child is unlikely to be renamed by a classroom.
- The Vaughan spelling is at least as well known, so expect a lifetime of people adding the extra a. Worth deciding early which spelling you want and saying it every time.
- It offers almost nothing to shorten, which some families love and others miss — there is no ready-made cuddly form for a toddler.
- Its strongest years were mid-century, so it is still well represented among older generations. That can read as classic or as inherited, depending on the company it keeps.
- A child with this name will very likely be the only one anyone around them knows — reliably recognized, rarely duplicated.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Vaughn
Masculine · #1152 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Vaughns are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 15,500 people named Vaughn are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Vaughn in 2025?
- Vaughn ranks #1152 among US boy names in 2025, with 183 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Vaughn?
- About 1 in every 9,334 US boys born in 2025 was named Vaughn — 183 in all.
- Will my child share the name Vaughn with classmates?
- Vaughn will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Vaughn
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Braden#1152 · Dangelo#1154 · Kacey#1154 · Osman#1156 · Yasir#1156 · Gianluca#1156 · Kalel#1159 · Kross#1145
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Vaughn? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Vaughn and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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