Gideon
About 22,302 American babies have been named Gideon since 1880, most of them around 2017. In 2025 it ranked 337th. About 21,000 Gideons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 10.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Gideon boys named Gideon
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 22,302
- Estimated living today
- 21,000
- Median age today
- 10
- Peak year
- 2017
- Best rank
- 304th
- Rank in 2025
- 337th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 32 / 22,270
How old the living Gideons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 22,302 babies given the name since 1880, about 21,000 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 16,000 of them are children and 190 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2015 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 Hebrew
("feller", "hewer", "mighty warrior").
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Gideons
- Gideon Sundback (1880–1954)Swedish-American inventor
- Gideon Mantell (1790–1852)British scientist and obstetrician
- Ernst Gideon von Laudon (1717–1790)Austrian general
- Gideon Sa'ar (born 1966)Israeli politician
- Gideon Mensah (born 1998)association football player
- Gideon Ståhlberg (1908–1967)Swedish chess player
- Gideon Levy (born 1953)Israeli journalist
- Gideon Welles (1802–1878)American government official; United States Secretary of the Navy from 1861 to 1869
People named Gideon with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Gideon is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Gideon is most concentrated in Alaska (4.9×), Utah (3.4×), Idaho (3.4×), Washington (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2017
The most popular boys’ names the year Gideon peaked:
Gideon elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Gideon | 1,090 | 644th |
| France boys | Gideon +1 spelling | 55 | 4,433rd |
| Scotland boys | Gideon | 26 | 257th |
| Ireland boys | Gideon | 16 | 403rd |
| Belgium boys | Gideon | 5 | 1,250th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Gideon | 3 | 404th |
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.
Gideon: rank by region
In 2005, Gideon was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Gideon | 792 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Gideon by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 593rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Gideon 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 | Gideon | 1,810 | 2,766 |
| Finland boys | Gideon | 40 | 209 |
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.
Related names
Gideon 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.