Christopher

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Christopher boys named Christopher

By the numbers

Total US births

2,079,103

Estimated living today

1.9 million

Median age today

41

Peak year

1984

Best rank

2nd

Rank in 2025

68th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

9,507 / 2,069,596

How old the living Christophers are

born that year still alive today

Of the 2,079,103 babies given the name since 1880, about 1.9 million are alive — 91 in every hundred. Roughly 168,000 of them are children and 74,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1984 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 Latin Christophorus, from Koine Greek Χρῑστόφορος (“carrier of Christ”), from Ancient Greek Χριστός (“Christ”) + φόρος (“carrier, bearer”), from φέρειν (“to carry, to bear”) + -ος (“-er: forming agent nouns”), from the legend of Saint Christopher carrying the infant Jesus across a river.

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

Notable Christophers

• Christopher Columbus (1451–1506)Italian navigator, explorer, and colonist
• Christopher Lee (1922–2015)English actor and singer
• Christopher Plummer (1929–2021)Canadian actor
• Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)English dramatist, poet and translator
• Christopher Wren (1632–1723)English architect
• Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011)English American author and journalist
• Christopher Reeve (1952–2004)American actor
• Christopher Walken (born 1943)American actor

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

Where Christopher is most common

• CA226,336
• NY173,724
• TX154,878
• FL93,977
• PA92,387
• OH91,025
• IL87,044
• MI73,299
• NJ71,415
• GA64,294

Relative to how many babies each state records, Christopher is most concentrated in Alaska (1.6×), Delaware (1.5×), Connecticut (1.4×), New Hampshire (1.4×).

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

Names of 1984

The most popular boys’ names the year Christopher peaked:

• Michael
• Christopher
• Matthew
• Joshua
• David
• Daniel

All the names of 1984

Christopher 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.

Christopher: 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, Christopher is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.05% of children were given it – 29 of them.

Christopher: rank by region

In 2020, Christopher was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2024, Christopher was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

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

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.

Christopher by city

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

Christopher 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.

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 Christopher lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 2,829 men called Christopher 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 47 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 5 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

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

Christopher against another name

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

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

Compare Christopher with a name of your own