Jonathan
About 874,440 American babies have been named Jonathan since 1880, most of them around 1988. In 2025 it ranked 89th. About 817,000 Jonathans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 34.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Jonathan boys named Jonathan
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 874,440
- Estimated living today
- 817,000
- Median age today
- 34
- Peak year
- 1988
- Best rank
- 15th
- Rank in 2025
- 89th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 3,574 / 870,866
How old the living Jonathans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 874,440 babies given the name since 1880, about 817,000 are alive — 93 in every hundred. Roughly 129,000 of them are children and 25,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1991 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
יוֹנָתָן, apparently with influence.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Jonathans
- Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist
- Jonathan Winters (1925–2013)American comedian, actor, artist
- Jonathan Demme (1944–2017)American filmmaker
- Jonathan Rhys Meyers (born 1977)Irish actor
- Jonathan Tah (born 1996)German footballer
- Jonathan Banks (born 1947)American actor
- Jonathan Franzen (born 1959)American writer
- Jonathan Pryce (born 1947)Welsh actor
People named Jonathan with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Jonathan is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Jonathan is most concentrated in Nevada (1.5×), New Hampshire (1.5×), Florida (1.4×), Alaska (1.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1988
The most popular boys’ names the year Jonathan peaked:
Jonathan elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Jonathan | 105,520 | 5th |
| England and Wales boys | Jonathan | 17,404 | 39th |
| Sweden boys | Jonathan | 11,359 | 8th |
| Ireland boys | Jonathan | 8,554 | 18th |
| New Zealand boys | Jonathan | 7,957 | 15th |
| Scotland boys | Jonathan | 6,671 | 28th |
| Denmark boys | Jonathan | 5,082 | 34th |
| Norway boys | Jonathan | 4,574 | 32nd |
| Italy boys | Jonathan | 4,546 | — |
| Belgium boys | Jonathan | 3,572 | 12th |
| Austria boys | Jonathan | 3,523 | 37th |
| Switzerland boys | Jonathan | 2,420 | 49th |
| Spain boys | Jonathan | 1,411 | 85th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Jonathan | 1,191 | 20th |
| Poland boys | Jonathan | 510 birth registrations | 184th |
| France girls | Jonathan | 5 | 3,138th |
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.
Jonathan: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Jonathan | 1,619 | 0.130% | 63rd |
| French boys | Switzerland | Jonathan | 687 | 0.158% | 27th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Jonathan | 111 | 0.170% | 27th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Jonathan | 3 | 0.081% | 18th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Jonathan is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.27% of children were given it – 101 of them.
Jonathan: rank by region
In 2025, Jonathan was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Jonathan | 642 | 8 |
In 2020, Jonathan was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Jonathan | 10 | 1 |
In 2024, Jonathan was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Podkarpackie | Jonathan | 161 | 2 |
In 2024, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Jonathan appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (345th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 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.
Jonathan by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 779 | 16th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Jonathan 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 | Jonathan | 5,237 | 12,355 |
| Finland boys | Jonathan | 1,354 | 2,649 |
| the Netherlands girls | Jonathan | — | 8 |
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.
Where Jonathan lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 24,786 men called Jonathan were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Jonathan | 1,525 | 2.861 | 53 |
| Asturias | Jonathan | 960 | 1.981 | 89 |
| Palmas, Las | Jonathan | 993 | 1.707 | 80 |
| Cáceres | Jonathan | 326 | 1.696 | 102 |
| Toledo | Jonathan | 541 | 1.425 | 107 |
| Pontevedra | Jonathan | 640 | 1.399 | 117 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Jonathan 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.