Arthur
The boy's name Arthur has been in the national records since 1880, with 551,930 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 87th. About 206,000 Arthurs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 61.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Arthur boys named Arthur
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 551,930
- Estimated living today
- 206,000
- Median age today
- 61
- Peak year
- 1921
- Best rank
- 19th
- Rank in 2025
- 87th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 3,201 / 548,729
How old the living Arthurs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 551,930 babies given the name since 1880, about 206,000 are alive — 37 in every hundred. Roughly 32,000 of them are children and 92,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1964 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
Origin Celtic languages
From the name of the legendary king, from Middle English Arthure, from Medieval Latin Arthurus, probably from Middle Welsh arth (“bear”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Arthurs
- Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)British writer and physician
- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)German philosopher
- Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891)French poet
- Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008)British science fiction writer, inventor, and futurist
- Arthur Miller (1915–2005)American playwright and essayist
- Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852)British Field Marshal, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1828–1830, 1834
- Arthur Balfour (1848–1930)British Prime Minister, Conservative politician, and statesman
- Arthur Holly Compton (1892–1962)American physicist
People named Arthur with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Arthur is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Arthur is most concentrated in Rhode Island (2.3×), Massachusetts (2.1×), Maine (2.0×), New Hampshire (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1921
The most popular boys’ names the year Arthur peaked:
Arthur elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Arthur | 141,245 | 8th |
| England and Wales boys | Arthur | 46,797 | 4th |
| Belgium boys | Arthur | 15,094 | 3rd |
| Denmark boys | Arthur | 4,191 | 8th |
| Switzerland boys | Arthur | 2,976 | 26th |
| Ireland boys | Arthur | 1,955 | 47th |
| Scotland boys | Arthur | 1,775 | 26th |
| Norway boys | Arthur | 1,715 | 81st |
| New Zealand boys | Arthur | 1,406 | 12th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Arthur | 942 | 9th |
| Italy boys | Arthur | 416 | — |
| Poland boys | Arthur | 397 birth registrations | 208th |
| Austria boys | Arthur | 135 | 60th |
| France girls | Arthur | 90 | 2,656th |
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.
Arthur: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Arthur | 740 | 0.059% | 74th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Arthur | 2,224 | 0.511% | 3rd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Arthur | 11 | 0.017% | 127th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Arthur | 1 | 0.027% | 10th |
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.
By canton, Arthur is most concentrated in Vaud, where 0.55% of children were given it – 914 of them.
Arthur: rank by region
In 2025, Arthur was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Arthur | 3 | 313 |
| Wallonia | Arthur | 2 | 178 |
| Brussels | Arthur | 7 | 46 |
In 2023, Arthur was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Arthur | 9 | 2 |
In 2025, Arthur was given 2 times or more in 3 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Arthur | 235 | 4 |
| Pomorskie | Arthur | 212 | 2 |
| Wielkopolskie | Arthur | 189 | 4 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Arthur appears in the lists for Province of Flemish Brabant (2nd), Province of West Flanders (2nd), Province of Walloon Brabant (2nd), Province of East Flanders (3rd), Province of Liège (4th), Province of Luxembourg (4th), Brussels-Capital Region (7th), Province of Antwerp (7th), Province of Hainaut (7th), Province of Limburg (8th) and Province of Namur (13th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Arthur by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 609 | 33rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Arthur 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Arthur | 7,124 | 12,347 |
| Finland boys | Arthur | 513 | 1,623 |
| the Netherlands girls | Arthur | — | 192 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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 Arthur lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 927 men called Arthur 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balears, Illes | Arthur | 47 | 0.075 | 880 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Arthur | 67 | 0.067 | 1,047 |
| Barcelona | Arthur | 191 | 0.065 | 935 |
| Tarragona | Arthur | 27 | 0.062 | 1,070 |
| Girona | Arthur | 24 | 0.058 | 1,115 |
| Málaga | Arthur | 47 | 0.054 | 1,032 |
Listed in 35 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 17 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
Arthur 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.