Hugh
About 84,179 American babies have been named Hugh since 1880, most of them around 1916. In 2025 it ranked 732nd. About 32,000 Hughs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 62.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Hugh boys named Hugh
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 84,179
- Estimated living today
- 32,000
- Median age today
- 62
- Peak year
- 1916
- Best rank
- 96th
- Rank in 2025
- 732nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 354 / 83,825
How old the living Hughs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 84,179 babies given the name since 1880, about 32,000 are alive — 38 in every hundred. Roughly 4,800 of them are children and 14,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1963 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 Germanic languages
From the Old French aristocratic and saint's name Hughe, brought to England by Normans, from a short form of Germanic names beginning with Proto-Germanic *hugiz (“heart, mind”), such as Hubert. Cognate with Old English hyge. More at high, how.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Hughs
- Hugh Grant (born 1960)British actor
- Hugh Laurie (born 1959)English actor, comedian, director, musician and writer
- Hugh Hefner (1926–2017)American businessman and magazine publisher
- Hugh Capet of France (940–996)King of the Franks
- Hugh David Politzer (born 1949)American physicist
- Hugh Masekela (1939–2018)South African jazz trumpeter
- Hugh Griffith (1912–1980)Welsh actor
- Hugh Bonneville (born 1963)British actor
People named Hugh with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Hugh is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Hugh is most concentrated in Georgia (2.6×), Tennessee (2.4×), Mississippi (2.3×), Alabama (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1916
The most popular boys’ names the year Hugh peaked:
Hugh elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland boys | Hugh | 4,077 | 53rd |
| England and Wales boys | Hugh | 3,287 | 198th |
| Scotland boys | Hugh | 1,386 | 73rd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Hugh | 329 | 126th |
| New Zealand boys | Hugh | 101 | 98th |
| France boys | Hugh | 50 | 5,683rd |
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.
Hugh 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 | Hugh | 6 | 24 |
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
Hugh 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.