Neal
The boy's name Neal has been in the national records since 1880, with 55,305 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,906th. About 35,000 Neals are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 57.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Neal boys named Neal
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 55,305
- Estimated living today
- 35,000
- Median age today
- 57
- Peak year
- 1959
- Best rank
- 222nd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,906th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 257 / 55,048
How old the living Neals are
born that year still alive today
Of the 55,305 babies given the name since 1880, about 35,000 are alive — 63 in every hundred. Roughly 2,000 of them are children and 12,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1968 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 Irish
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Neals
- Neal Stephenson (born 1959)American science fiction writer
- Neal McDonough (born 1966)American actor
- Neal Maupay (born 1996)French footballer
- Neal Cassady (1926–1968)American writer
- Neal Schon (born 1954)American guitarist and composer
- Neal H. Moritz (born 1959)American film producer
- Neal Skupski (born 1989)British tennis player
- Neal Mohan (born 1973)CEO of YouTube since 2023
People named Neal with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Neal is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Neal is most concentrated in Hawaii (2.9×), Nebraska (1.9×), Iowa (1.8×), Wisconsin (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1959
The most popular boys’ names the year Neal peaked:
Neal elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Neal | 510 | 1,113th |
| Ireland boys | Neal | 347 | 154th |
| Belgium boys | Neal | 318 | 492nd |
| England and Wales boys | Neal | 231 | 654th |
| Scotland boys | Neal | 205 | 150th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Neal | 3 | 299th |
| Poland boys | Neal | 2 birth registrations | 779th |
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.
Neal: rank by region
In 2022, Neal was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Neal | 624 | 8 |
In 2020, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Neal appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (199th).
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.
Neal by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 566th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Related names
Neal 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.