Anderson
The boy's name Anderson has been in the national records since 1880, with 35,646 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 363rd. About 30,000 Andersons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 12.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Anderson boys named Anderson
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 35,646
- Estimated living today
- 30,000
- Median age today
- 12
- Peak year
- 2012
- Best rank
- 280th
- Rank in 2025
- 363rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,655 / 33,991
How old the living Andersons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 35,646 babies given the name since 1880, about 30,000 are alive — 83 in every hundred. Roughly 21,000 of them are children and 1,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2013 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
From after Saint Andrew, patron saint of Scotland. In the United States, sometimes an anglicization of Danish and Norwegian Andersen or Swedish Andersson.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Andersons
- Anderson (born 1988)Brazilian association football player
- Anderson Cooper (born 1967)American journalist
- Sonny Anderson (born 1970)Brazilian footballer
- Anderson Silva (born 1975)Brazilian mixed martial artist
- Anderson Varejão (born 1982)Brazilian basketball player
- Ânderson Polga (born 1979)Brazilian footballer
- Anderson Peters (born 1997)Grenadian athletics competitor
- Anderson Lopes (born 1993)Brazilian association football player
People named Anderson with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Anderson is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Anderson is most concentrated in Georgia (2.5×), Mississippi (2.3×), Alabama (2.2×), North Carolina (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2012
The most popular boys’ names the year Anderson peaked:
Anderson elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Anderson | 985 | 823rd |
| England and Wales boys | Anderson | 476 | 903rd |
| Switzerland boys | Anderson | 37 | 922nd |
| Scotland boys | Anderson | 28 | 516th |
| Ireland boys | Anderson | 6 | 451st |
| Poland boys | Anderson | 2 birth registrations | 663rd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Anderson: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Anderson | 12 | 0.001% | 1,015th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Anderson | 23 | 0.005% | 361st |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Anderson | 2 | 0.003% | 193rd |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Anderson among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Anderson | — | 12 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Anderson lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,421 men called Anderson were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ávila | Anderson | 10 | 0.124 | 532 |
| Balears, Illes | Anderson | 66 | 0.106 | 679 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Anderson | 30 | 0.096 | 755 |
| Madrid | Anderson | 323 | 0.095 | 629 |
| Navarra | Anderson | 32 | 0.094 | 736 |
| Toledo | Anderson | 34 | 0.090 | 691 |
Listed in 40 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 12 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Anderson against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.