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Colleen vs Colton

American parents have registered 163,084 Colleens since 1880, against 152,174 Coltons. But in 2025 it was Colton that was commoner, 3,426 babies to 60.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Colleen against Colton, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Colleen Colton

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 124 years in which either name was published, Colleen for 87 years and Colton for 37 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Colleen Colton
Total US births 163,084152,174
Most in one year 4,5606,496
Babies in 2025 603,426
Estimated living today 133,000150,000
Median age today 5814
Peak year 19642013
Best rank 94th girls65th boys
Rank in 2025 2,822nd103rd
First recorded 19011913
Girls / boys 162,754 / 330209 / 151,965

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Colleens alive today are over 58; half the Coltons are over 14. That is 44 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Colleen Colton
France 1,74510
England and Wales 230684
Scotland 509237
Ireland 48178
Northern Ireland 199139

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Colleen and Colton.