Pat
About 66,855 American babies have been named Pat since 1880, most of them around 1941. It is given to both boys and girls. It has not appeared in the national data since 2014. About 32,000 Pats are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 75.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Pat boys named Pat
Girls and boys called Pat
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Pat crossed from girls to boys in 1960, having already crossed in 1926, and has stayed there for 29 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% boys, and in 1991 it was 81%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 100 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 66,855
- Estimated living today
- 32,000
- Median age today
- 75
- Peak year
- 1941
- Best rank
- 134th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 40,123 / 26,732
How old the living Pats are
born that year still alive today
Of the 66,855 babies given the name since 1880, about 32,000 are alive — 48 in every hundred. Roughly 10 of them are children and 25,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1950 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 Pats
- Pat Nixon (1912–1993)First Lady of the United States from 1969 to 1974
- Pat Buchanan (born 1938)American politician and commentator
- Pat Benatar (born 1953)American singer
- Pat Hingle (1924–2009)American actor
- Pat Jennings (born 1945)Northern Irish footballer
- Pat Morita (1932–2005)Japanese-American actor
- Pat Boone (born 1934)American singer
- Pat Metheny (born 1954)American jazz musician
People named Pat with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Pat is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Pat is most concentrated in Oklahoma (2.6×), New Mexico (2.6×), Montana (2.5×), Washington (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1941
The most popular girls’ names the year Pat peaked:
Pat elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland boys | Pat | 78 | 472nd |
| England and Wales boys | Pat | 16 | 3,990th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Pat | 6 | 392nd |
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
Pat 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.