Christian

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Christian boys named Christian

By the numbers

Total US births

473,843

Estimated living today

454,000

Median age today

24

Peak year

2000

Best rank

22nd

Rank in 2025

96th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

19,875 / 453,968

How old the living Christians are

born that year still alive today

Of the 473,843 babies given the name since 1880, about 454,000 are alive — 96 in every hundred. Roughly 137,000 of them are children and 4,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2001 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 Ancient Greek

From Middle English Cristien, from Old French chrestien, from Latin Chrīstiānus, from Ancient Greek Χρῑστιᾱνός, from Χρῑστός (“Christ, anointed [one]”) + Latin suffix -ānus. The older form is Christen..

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Christians

• Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875)Danish writer and poet
• Christian Bale (born 1974)American-English actor
• Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851)Danish physicist and chemist
• Christian Wulff (born 1959)10th German Federal President
• Christian Dopplerr (1803–1853)Austrian mathematician and physicist
• Christian Dior (1905–1957)French fashion designer
• Christian Eriksen (born 1992)Danish association football player
• Christian de Duve (1917–2013)Belgian biochemist, cytologist

People named Christian with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Christian is most common

• CA76,153
• TX50,540
• NY35,553
• FL28,570
• IL18,642
• PA17,861
• NJ16,900
• GA15,460
• NC14,244
• OH13,754

Relative to how many babies each state records, Christian is most concentrated in Nevada (2.4×), Florida (1.8×), Arizona (1.6×), California (1.6×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2000

The most popular boys’ names the year Christian peaked:

• Jacob
• Michael
• Matthew
• Joshua
• Christopher
• Nicholas

All the names of 2000

Christian elsewhere

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.

Christian: births by region

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, Christian is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.46% of children were given it – 286 of them.

Christian: rank by region

In 2025, Christian was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2023, Christian was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2024, Christian was given 2 times or more in 3 regions of Poland.

In 2017, with the country taken in 5 parts rather than 21, Christian appears in the lists for Sud (10th).

In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Christian appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (257th).

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.

Christian by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Christian 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.

Among boys in Finland this is mostly a middle name: of the 10,731 who carry it, 2,026 go by it.

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 Christian lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 23,330 men called Christian 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

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Christopher
• Christine
• Christina
• Chris
• Christy
• Christie
• Christa
• Christi
• Chrystal
• Christen
• Christin
• Christiana

Christian against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Christian vs Christopher
• Christian vs Christine
• Christian vs Christina
• Christian vs Chris
• Christian vs Christy
• Christian vs Christie

Compare Christian with a name of your own