Porter
About 21,801 American babies have been named Porter since 1880, most of them around 2015. In 2025 it ranked 560th. About 18,000 Porters are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 12.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Porter boys named Porter
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 21,801
- Estimated living today
- 18,000
- Median age today
- 12
- Peak year
- 2015
- Best rank
- 375th
- Rank in 2025
- 560th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 993 / 20,808
How old the living Porters are
born that year still alive today
Of the 21,801 babies given the name since 1880, about 18,000 are alive — 82 in every hundred. Roughly 13,000 of them are children and 690 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2013 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
From Middle English Porter, from porter (“porter”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Porters
- Archer John Porter Martin (1910–2002)British chemist
- Porter Robinson (born 1992)American DJ, singer and record producer
- Porter Wagoner (1927–2007)American country singer
- Edward Porter Alexander (1835–1910)Confederate Army general
- Porter Hall (1888–1953)American actor
People named Porter with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Porter is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Porter is most concentrated in Utah (14.1×), Idaho (7.4×), Arizona (2.5×), Colorado (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2015
The most popular boys’ names the year Porter peaked:
Porter elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Porter | 87 | 2,112th |
| England and Wales girls | Porter | 9 | 5,765th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Porter | 3 | 392nd |
| Scotland boys | Porter | 3 | 733rd |
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
Porter 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.