Humanverse

Natasha vs Nathan

American parents have registered 589,271 Nathans since 1880, against 97,937 Natashas. Nathan is still ahead, with 4,980 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Natasha against Nathan, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Natasha Nathan

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

Nathan 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 1972, when Natasha had 1,737 and Nathan had 3,537.

Side by side

  Natasha Nathan
Total US births 97,937589,271
Most in one year 4,14714,696
Babies in 2025 2024,980
Estimated living today 95,000540,000
Median age today 3827
Peak year 19872004
Best rank 73rd girls20th boys
Rank in 2025 1,144th63rd
First recorded 19341880
Girls / boys 97,652 / 2851,774 / 587,497

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 Natashas alive today are over 38; half the Nathans are over 27. That is 11 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 Natasha Nathan
France 830123,275
England and Wales 15,60147,388
New Zealand 5,5339,311
Belgium 22713,174
Italy 1,14611,694
Scotland 3,7757,353
Ireland 2,6306,817
Northern Ireland 5052,418
Poland 3121,955
Norway 275340

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: Natasha and Nathan.