Humanverse

Oneil

Oneil reached its high-water mark in 1924 at number 1,169, and has been recorded 1,774 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 9,714th. About 1,000 Oneils are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 34.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 10 20 30 40 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Oneil boys named Oneil

By the numbers

Total US births
1,774
Estimated living today
1,000
Median age today
34
Peak year
1924
Best rank
1,169th
Rank in 2025
9,714th
First recorded
1892
Girls / boys
17 / 1,757

How old the living Oneils are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 13 25 38 50 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 1,774 babies given the name since 1892, about 1,000 are alive — 58 in every hundred. 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.

Notable Oneils

People named Oneil with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Oneil is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Oneil is most concentrated in Louisiana (21.9×), New York (6.3×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1924

The most popular boys’ names the year Oneil peaked:

All the names of 1924

Oneil elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
France boys O'neil +1 spelling 30 4,801st
England and Wales boys O'neil +1 spelling 20 1,771st

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.

Related names

Oneil against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Oneil with a name of your own

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.