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Jonas vs Jonatan

American parents have registered 28,588 Jonases since 1880, against 3,725 Jonatans. Jonas is still ahead, with 476 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jonas against Jonatan, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jonas 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

Jonas has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1992, when Jonas had 152 and Jonatan had 98.

Side by side

  Jonas Jonatan
Total US births 28,5883,725
Most in one year 1,256159
Babies in 2025 47647
Estimated living today 25,0003,600
Median age today 1822
Peak year 20082006
Best rank 273rd boys1,102nd boys
Rank in 2025 599th2,718th
First recorded 18801971
Girls / boys 28 / 28,5600 / 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 Jonatans alive today are over 22; half the Jonases are over 18. That is 4 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 Jonas Jonatan
Norway 16,2891,112
France 10,025385
Belgium 6,72643
Switzerland 5,906111
Italy 1,944245
England and Wales 1,66465
Poland 1381,407
Ireland 1396

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: Jonas and Jonatan.