Nathan vs Nathaniel

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Nathan 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, Nathan for 110 years and Nathaniel for 36 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

• 1880–1919 Nathan ahead
• 1920 Nathaniel ahead
• 1921 Nathan ahead
• 1922 Nathaniel ahead
• 1923 Nathan ahead
• 1924–1957 Nathaniel ahead
• 1958–2025 Nathan ahead

Side by side

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

• Nathan Utah (2.1×), Alaska (1.8×), New Hampshire (1.7×)
• Nathaniel South Carolina (1.9×), Alaska (1.9×), the District of Columbia (1.7×)

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.

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

• Nathan vs Natalie
• Nathan vs Natasha
• Nathan vs Natalia
• Nathan vs Nathanael
• Nathan vs Nathalie
• Nathaniel vs Natalie
• Nathaniel vs Natasha
• Nathaniel vs Natalia