Kristen
The girl's name Kristen has been in the national records since 1938, with 220,952 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,990th. About 212,000 Kristens are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 40.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Kristen boys named Kristen
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 220,952
- Estimated living today
- 212,000
- Median age today
- 40
- Peak year
- 1982
- Best rank
- 33rd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,990th
- First recorded
- 1938
- Girls / boys
- 218,767 / 2,185
How old the living Kristens are
born that year still alive today
Of the 220,952 babies given the name since 1938, about 212,000 are alive — 96 in every hundred. Roughly 5,400 of them are children and 3,300 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1985 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
A spelling variant of Kristin, from Christina, fairly popular in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Kristens
- Kristen Stewart (born 1990)American actress
- Kristen Bell (born 1980)American actress
- Kristen Wiig (born 1973)American actress and comedian
- Kristen Michal (born 1975)Estonian politician
- Kristen Schaal (born 1978)American actress
- Kristen Nygaard (1926–2002)Computer scientist, Mathematician
- Kristen Connolly (born 1980)American film actress
- Kristen Johnston (born 1967)American actress
People named Kristen with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Kristen is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Kristen is most concentrated in Rhode Island (2.5×), New Hampshire (2.1×), Massachusetts (1.8×), Connecticut (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1982
The most popular girls’ names the year Kristen peaked:
Kristen elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway boys | Kristen | 604 | 170th |
| France girls | Kristen | 520 | 1,323rd |
| England and Wales girls | Kristen | 481 | 608th |
| France boys | Kristen | 395 | 1,448th |
| Scotland girls | Kristen | 164 | 263rd |
| England and Wales boys | Kristen | 124 | 1,534th |
| Ireland girls | Kristen | 56 | 425th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Kristen | 25 | 370th |
| Ireland boys | Kristen | 3 | 339th |
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.
Kristen 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 girls | Kristen | 31 | 61 |
| Finland boys | Kristen | 14 | 22 |
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
Kristen 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.