Galen
Galen is a boy's name that peaked in 1949, when it was the 329th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 4,396th. About 11,000 Galens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 52.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Galen boys named Galen
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 17,060
- Estimated living today
- 11,000
- Median age today
- 52
- Peak year
- 1949
- Best rank
- 329th
- Rank in 2025
- 4,396th
- First recorded
- 1889
- Girls / boys
- 560 / 16,500
How old the living Galens are
born that year still alive today
Of the 17,060 babies given the name since 1889, about 11,000 are alive — 66 in every hundred. Roughly 850 of them are children and 3,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1973 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 Galen, from Latin Galēnus, from Ancient Greek Γαληνός, from γαλήνη.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Galens
- Galen Rupp (born 1986)American distance runner
- Galen Spencer (1840–1904)American archer
- Galen Weston (1940–2021)Canadian billionaire
People named Galen with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Galen is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Galen is most concentrated in Kansas (9.1×), Maine (7.7×), Iowa (4.7×), Nebraska (4.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1949
The most popular boys’ names the year Galen peaked:
Galen elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Galen | 20 | 5,383rd |
| England and Wales boys | Galen | 18 | 3,687th |
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.
Related names
Galen 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.