Clifton
The boy's name Clifton has been in the national records since 1880, with 70,685 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,906th. About 37,000 Cliftons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 54.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Clifton boys named Clifton
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 70,685
- Estimated living today
- 37,000
- Median age today
- 54
- Peak year
- 1975
- Best rank
- 186th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,906th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 436 / 70,249
How old the living Cliftons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 70,685 babies given the name since 1880, about 37,000 are alive — 52 in every hundred. Roughly 1,900 of them are children and 12,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1971 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 a surname
Literally meaning "town by a cliff." From Old English clif (“cliff”) + tūn (“town”). Analyzable as.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Cliftons
- Clifton Webb (1889–1966)American actor, singer and dancer
- Clifton Collins (born 1970)American actor
- Clifton Williams (1932–1967)American astronaut
- Clifton James (1920–2017)American actor
- Clifton Powell (born 1956)American actor and comedian
- Clifton Davis (born 1945)American actor, musician and minister
- Henry Clifton Sorby (1826–1908)British scientist, founder of microscopical petrology and metallography
- Clifton Chenier (1925–1987)American zydeco accordion player and singer
People named Clifton with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Clifton is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Clifton is most concentrated in Mississippi (4.9×), Louisiana (3.4×), North Carolina (3.2×), Arkansas (3.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1975
The most popular boys’ names the year Clifton peaked:
Clifton elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Clifton | 20 | 4,367th |
| England and Wales boys | Clifton | 7 | 2,337th |
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.
Clifton 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 | Clifton | — | 8 |
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.
Related names
Clifton 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.