Sean
Sean reached its high-water mark in 1990 at number 37, and has been recorded 426,606 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 489th. About 398,000 Seans are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 37.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Sean boys named Sean
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 426,606
- Estimated living today
- 398,000
- Median age today
- 37
- Peak year
- 1990
- Best rank
- 37th
- Rank in 2025
- 489th
- First recorded
- 1925
- Girls / boys
- 2,969 / 423,637
How old the living Seans are
born that year still alive today
Of the 426,606 babies given the name since 1925, about 398,000 are alive — 93 in every hundred. Roughly 36,000 of them are children and 5,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1988 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
Anglicised form of Irish Seán, from Old French Jehan, from Latin Johannes, variant of Ioannes, from Koine Greek Ἰωάννης, from Hebrew יוֹחָנָן.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Seans
- Sean Connery (1930–2020)Scottish actor
- Sean Penn (born 1960)American actor
- Sean Bean (born 1959)British actor
- Sean Combs (born 1969)American rapper and producer
- Sean Astin (born 1971)American actor
- Seán MacBride (1904–1988)Irish politician and human rights activist
- Robert Sean Leonard (born 1969)American actor
- Sean Hayes (born 1970)American actor
People named Sean with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Sean is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Sean is most concentrated in Alaska (2.1×), Hawaii (2.0×), Delaware (1.9×), Massachusetts (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1990
The most popular boys’ names the year Sean peaked:
Sean elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland boys | Sean +3 spellings | 32,838 | 1st |
| England and Wales boys | Sean | 15,067 | 49th |
| Scotland boys | Sean | 10,881 | 12th |
| New Zealand boys | Sean | 5,201 | 29th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Sean | 2,915 | 15th |
| France boys | Sean +1 spelling | 2,690 | 359th |
| Belgium boys | Sean | 1,102 | 184th |
| Switzerland boys | Sean | 600 | 175th |
| Norway boys | Sean | 568 | 181st |
| Italy boys | Sean | 481 | — |
| Poland boys | Sean +1 spelling | 203 birth registrations | 211th |
| Scotland girls | Sean | 3 | 641st |
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.
Sean: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Sean | 455 | 0.037% | 143rd |
| French boys | Switzerland | Sean | 104 | 0.024% | 140th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Sean | 41 | 0.063% | 59th |
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, Sean is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.06% of children were given it – 40 of them.
Sean: rank by region
In 2023, Sean was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Sean | 769 | 6 |
In 2020, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Sean appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (326th).
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.
Sean by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 580th |
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 584th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Sean 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Sean | 1,270 | 2,121 |
| Finland boys | Sean +2 spellings | 150 | 224 |
| the Netherlands girls | Sean | — | 8 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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 Sean lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 328 men called Sean 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Málaga | Sean | 33 | 0.038 | 1,349 |
| Almería | Sean | 12 | 0.031 | 1,761 |
| Palmas, Las | Sean | 18 | 0.031 | 2,353 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Sean | 30 | 0.030 | 1,982 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Sean | 12 | 0.023 | 3,013 |
| Tarragona | Sean | 10 | 0.023 | 2,151 |
Listed in 17 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 35 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
Sean 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.