Ignatius
About 4,075 American babies have been named Ignatius since 1885, most of them around 2025. In 2025 it ranked 1,663rd. About 1,900 Ignatiuses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 12.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Ignatius
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 4,075
- Estimated living today
- 1,900
- Median age today
- 12
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 1,663rd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,663rd
- First recorded
- 1885
How old the living Ignatiuses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 4,075 babies given the name since 1885, about 1,900 are alive — 47 in every hundred. Roughly 1,200 of them are children and 300 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2013 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 Latin
From Latin Ignātius, variant of gens name Egnātius, altered to resemble ignis (“fire”), establishing a folk etymology meaning akin to “Fiery One”. Of uncertain origin, perhaps originally borrowed from ett.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Ignatiuss
- Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556)Spanish Catholic priest and theologian
- Ignatius of Antioch (35–108)late 1st/early 2nd century Christian author and Patriarch of Antioch
- Ignatius Kutu Acheampong (1931–1979)soldier and former military head of state of Ghana
- Ignatius Joseph III Younan (born 1944)Syrian-Catholic Patriarch
- Ignatius of Constantinople (797–877)9th century Patriarch of Constantinople
- Ignatius IV of Antioch (1920–2012)Patriarch of Antioch
- Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo (born 1950)Catholic Cardinal
- Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei (1901–2000)Catholic cardinal
People named Ignatius with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ignatius is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ignatius is most concentrated in New York (4.8×), Pennsylvania (3.2×), Illinois (2.2×), Ohio (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular boys’ names the year Ignatius peaked:
Ignatius elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Ignatius | 136 | 1,825th |
| Ireland boys | Ignatius | 35 | 179th |
| Scotland boys | Ignatius | 3 | 727th |
| Poland boys | Ignatius | 2 birth registrations | 745th |
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.
Ignatius 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 | Ignatius | 520 | 4,789 |
| the Netherlands girls | Ignatius | — | 239 |
| Finland boys | Ignatius | — | 18 |
Among boys in the Netherlands this is mostly a middle name: of the 4,789 who carry it, 520 go by it.
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
Ignatius 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.