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Jon vs Jonatan

American parents have registered 169,391 Jons since 1880, against 3,725 Jonatans. Jon is still ahead, with 246 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jon against Jonatan, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jon Jonatan

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

Jon has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1898 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2011, when Jon had 347 and Jonatan had 102.

Side by side

  Jon Jonatan
Total US births 169,3913,725
Most in one year 4,941159
Babies in 2025 24647
Estimated living today 131,0003,600
Median age today 5622
Peak year 19642006
Best rank 79th boys1,102nd boys
Rank in 2025 951st2,718th
First recorded 18981971
Girls / boys 1,249 / 168,1420 / 3,725

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 Jons alive today are over 56; half the Jonatans are over 22. That is 34 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 Jon Jonatan
Norway 15,5641,112
England and Wales 1,42365
Poland 21,407
France 940385
Switzerland 1,173111
Belgium 7943
Ireland 696

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: Jon and Jonatan.