Neil
About 105,254 American babies have been named Neil since 1880, most of them around 1954. In 2025 it ranked 850th. About 71,000 Neils are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 51.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Neil boys named Neil
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 105,254
- Estimated living today
- 71,000
- Median age today
- 51
- Peak year
- 1954
- Best rank
- 147th
- Rank in 2025
- 850th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 385 / 104,869
How old the living Neils are
born that year still alive today
Of the 105,254 babies given the name since 1880, about 71,000 are alive — 67 in every hundred. Roughly 6,600 of them are children and 20,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1974 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
Anglicized form of /Irish Niall.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Neils
- Neil Armstrong (1930–2012)American astronaut and lunar explorer
- Neil Gaiman (born 1960)English writer
- Neil deGrasse Tyson (born 1958)American astrophysicist and science communicator
- Neil Young (born 1945)Canadian singer, songwriter and filmmaker
- Neil Patrick Harris (born 1973)American actor
- Neil Diamond (born 1941)American recording artist; singer-songwriter
- Neil Simon (1927–2018)American playwright, writer, and academic
- Neil Postman (1931–2003)American writer and academic
People named Neil with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Neil is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Neil is most concentrated in North Dakota (2.5×), South Dakota (2.1×), Minnesota (1.8×), Massachusetts (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1954
The most popular boys’ names the year Neil peaked:
Neil elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland boys | Neil | 7,356 | 21st |
| Ireland boys | Neil | 3,666 | 55th |
| New Zealand boys | Neil | 3,392 | 30th |
| France boys | Neil +1 spelling | 2,785 | 482nd |
| England and Wales boys | Neil | 1,491 | 232nd |
| Switzerland boys | Neil | 321 | 414th |
| Belgium boys | Neil | 278 | 552nd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Neil | 207 | 84th |
| France girls | Neil | 25 | 5,600th |
| Poland boys | Neil | 15 birth registrations | 536th |
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.
Neil: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Neil | 238 | 0.019% | 280th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Neil | 72 | 0.017% | 353rd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Neil | 11 | 0.017% | 93rd |
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, Neil is most concentrated in Vaud, where 0.02% of children were given it – 32 of them.
Neil: rank by region
In 2022, Neil was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Neil | 353 | 8 |
In 2025, Neil was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Neil | 243 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.
Neil by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 7 | 535th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Neil 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 | Neil | 38 | 82 |
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.
Where Neil lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 675 men called Neil 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Melilla | Neil | 6 | 0.137 | 651 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Neil | 76 | 0.076 | 959 |
| Barcelona | Neil | 189 | 0.065 | 942 |
| Málaga | Neil | 48 | 0.055 | 1,011 |
| Girona | Neil | 23 | 0.055 | 1,153 |
| Almería | Neil | 21 | 0.053 | 1,157 |
Listed in 25 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 27 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Neil 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.