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Natalie vs Nathaniel

American parents have registered 379,831 Natalies since 1880, against 288,265 Nathaniels. Natalie is still ahead, with 2,736 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Natalie against Nathaniel, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Natalie Nathaniel

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 146 years in which either name was published, Nathaniel for 78 years and Natalie for 68 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Natalie Nathaniel
Total US births 379,831288,265
Most in one year 10,9706,829
Babies in 2025 2,7362,565
Estimated living today 353,000249,000
Median age today 2526
Peak year 20062002
Best rank 17th girls62nd boys
Rank in 2025 89th140th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 379,062 / 7691,162 / 287,103

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.

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 Natalie Nathaniel
England and Wales 10,94612,512
Scotland 6,722566
New Zealand 4,112329
France 1,3402,040
Norway 2,1971,029
Ireland 2,065399
Poland 895717
Italy 1,191269
Switzerland 604185
Northern Ireland 298200
Belgium 105224

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: Natalie and Nathaniel.