Stephen
A masculine Greek name meaning "crown" or "wreath."
Name Census estimates that about 680,609 living Americans carry the first name Stephen. It sits at #377 in the overall ranking, outside the top 50 but still well-represented. The name is used almost exclusively for boys. The average person named Stephen today is around 55 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Stephen births was 1952 (23,081 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Stephen. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
For a British comparison, Name Census UK has a UK baby-name profile for Stephen with official rankings and popularity over time.
Key insights
- • Although Stephen is used almost entirely for boys, the SSA data does show 2,930 girls registered with the name since 1880.
- • Compared to the 1950s, recent registration numbers for Stephen have dropped to less than 5% of what they once were.
People living today
681K
~ 1 in 504 Americans
Peak year
1952
23,081 babies that year
Average age
55
years old
2024 SSA rank
#377
Tracked since 1880
Census
Stephen in the 2020 Census
The 2020 Census recorded 665,593 people with the first name Stephen, which placed it at #56 in the published first-name tables. This is a snapshot of people who already had the name at the time of the Census.
The SSA sections elsewhere on this page answer a different question: how often parents gave the name to babies over time. The "people living today" figure on this page is different again: it is a current estimate built from SSA birth records and age-based survival rates, so the two numbers are not expected to match exactly.
2020 Census rank
#56
National first-name rank
People counted
666K
665,593 in the published race/origin table
Per 100,000
220.4
People with this name in 2020
Largest reported group
White
86.5% of people with this name
Demographics
Ancestry and ethnicity for Stephen
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Stephen is White at 86.5%. The next largest groups are Black (5.0%) and Hispanic (3.9%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself.
The bar chart below shows how people with the first name Stephen described their own race and ethnicity on the 2020 Census form. The Census Bureau groups responses into six broad categories: White, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Two or More Races. When a category has too few respondents for a given name, the Bureau suppresses the figure to protect individual privacy, which is why some names show fewer than six slices.
Percentages are shown so the breakdown is easy to read across every published category. Because the 2020 Census first-name file also includes raw headcounts for each group, Name Census can show those alongside the percentages in the legend and hover tooltip.
Keep in mind that these are self-reported numbers. A first name does not determine a person's race or ethnicity, and the distribution you see here reflects the specific population who happened to carry the name Stephen at the time of the 2020 Census, not any inherent property of the name itself.
- White86.5% · 575,833
- Black or African American5.0% · 33,012
- Hispanic or Latino3.9% · 25,704
- Two or more races2.4% · 16,104
- Asian and Pacific Islander1.9% · 12,355
- American Indian and Alaska Native0.4% · 2,585
Gender
Gender distribution for Stephen
Out of the 866,834 babies given the name Stephen since 1880, 99.7% were registered as male. The name sits firmly on the male side of the spectrum, with only a handful of female registrations across the entire dataset.
Stephen as a male name
- Ranked #377 in 2024
- 864 male births in 2024
- Peak: 1952 (23,054 births)
Stephen as a female name
- Ranked #17,357 in 2007
- 6 female births in 2007
- Peak: 1985 (97 births)
2020 Census snapshot
In the 2020 Census sex table, Stephen appears almost entirely male. Of the 665,596 people counted with this name, 99.9% were male and only a very small share were female.
Popularity
Stephen: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Stephen from the 1880s through to the 2020s, spanning 15 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 1950s, with 207,627 total registrations. Usage has dropped considerably from its 1950s peak. The most recent decade brought in only a fraction of the registrations that the name once attracted.
Babies born per year
Decades
Stephen by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Stephen during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
| Decade | Male | Female | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1880s | 1,684 | 0 | 1,684 |
| 1890s | 1,733 | 0 | 1,733 |
| 1900s | 2,247 | 0 | 2,247 |
| 1910s | 13,503 | 51 | 13,554 |
| 1920s | 15,557 | 74 | 15,631 |
| 1930s | 18,272 | 80 | 18,352 |
| 1940s | 106,810 | 238 | 107,048 |
| 1950s | 207,276 | 351 | 207,627 |
| 1960s | 152,231 | 477 | 152,708 |
| 1970s | 107,812 | 652 | 108,464 |
| 1980s | 113,635 | 738 | 114,373 |
| 1990s | 75,164 | 220 | 75,384 |
| 2000s | 28,901 | 49 | 28,950 |
| 2010s | 14,418 | 0 | 14,418 |
| 2020s | 4,661 | 0 | 4,661 |
Geography
Where Stephens live
The SSA's state-level files cover 51 states and territories. New York, California, Pennsylvania recorded the most babies named Stephen, while Wyoming, North Dakota, Alaska recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 16,816 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Stephen
The name Stephen derives from the Greek name Stephanos, meaning "crown" or "wreath". It originated in the 1st century AD among early Christians in the Greek-speaking eastern Mediterranean region.
Stephen was a common name among early Christians and one of the first Christian martyrs, St. Stephen, was stoned to death in Jerusalem around 34 AD, according to the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament. This event helped popularize the name among early Christians.
The name spread throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, appearing in various spellings such as Stefano in Italian, Esteban in Spanish, and Stéphane in French. It was particularly popular in England, where it was introduced by Greek missionaries in the 7th century.
One of the earliest recorded instances of the name was Stephen, the third king of Hungary, who reigned from 1000 to 1038 AD. Another notable early bearer was Stephen Harding, an English monk who founded the Cistercian Order in France in 1098.
Throughout history, there have been several prominent individuals named Stephen. These include Saint Stephen I, Pope from 254 to 257 AD, who established the Church's authority to appoint bishops. Stephen of Blois, a French nobleman and crusader in the 12th century, led armies during the First Crusade.
Other famous Stephens include the writers Stephen Crane (1871-1900), author of "The Red Badge of Courage", and Stephen King (born 1947), known for his horror novels like "The Shining". In the sciences, Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) was a renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist.
Stephen F. Austin (1793-1836) was an American empresario who played a key role in the colonization of Texas and the Texas Revolution. And Stephen A. Douglas (1813-1861) was an American politician who famously debated Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois Senate campaign.
Notable bearers
Famous people named Stephen
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Stephen Baldwin
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Stephen Boyd
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Stephen Burrows
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Stephen Carpenter
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Stephen Chiodo
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Stephen Chow
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Stephen Davis
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Stephen Dorff
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Stephen Fry
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Stephen Furst
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Stephen Herek
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Stephen Hillenburg
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Stephen Hopkins
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Stephen Kay
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Stephen Kessler
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Stephen King
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Stephen Lynch
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Stephen Moore
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Stephen Norrington
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Stephen Poliakoff
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Stephen Rea
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Stephen Sommers
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Stephen Traxler
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Stephen Verona
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Stephen Wallace
People
Stephen + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Stephen as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with S
Other first names starting with S with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Stephen: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Stephen?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 680,609 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Stephen going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 504 US residents.
Is Stephen a common name?
We classify Stephen as "Very Common". It ranks above 100% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 866,834 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Stephen most popular?
The single biggest year for Stephen was 1952, when 23,081 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Stephen is about 55 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
How common was Stephen in the 2020 Census?
The published 2020 Census first-name tables recorded 665,593 people with the name Stephen, or 220.37 per 100,000 residents. That placed it at #56 in the national Census ranking for first names.
Why is the Census count different from the living estimate?
Because they measure different things. The Census figure is a count of people who had the name Stephen in 2020. The living estimate aims to answer a current question instead: how many people with the name are alive today, based on SSA birth records and age-based survival rates. Since one number is a 2020 snapshot and the other is a present-day estimate, they are not expected to be identical.
What does the Census say about the gender split for Stephen?
In the 2020 Census sex table, Stephen appears almost entirely male. Of the 665,596 people counted with this name, 99.9% were male and only a very small share were female. The Census view is a snapshot of people living with the name in 2020, while the SSA section above tracks births across time.
What does the Census say about the background of people named Stephen?
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Stephen is White at 86.5%. The next largest groups are Black (5.0%) and Hispanic (3.9%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself. The percentages in the chart above come from self-reported race and Hispanic-origin responses in the 2020 Census.
Which group reports the name Stephen most often in the Census?
White is the largest reported group for people named Stephen in the 2020 Census, accounting for 86.5% (575,833 people in the published table).
Why can the Census sex total and race total differ slightly?
The Census Bureau published separate 2020 tables for sex and for race/Hispanic origin, and the released figures can differ slightly because of privacy protection in the public files. That is why this page treats the gender section and the race/origin section as two related snapshots instead of forcing them into one identical total.
Does every first name have Census demographic data?
No. The public Census first-name release only includes names that met the Bureau's publication rules, so many rarer names in the SSA files have no Census demographic snapshot. When that happens, the SSA trend, gender history, and state sections still appear, but the 2020 Census demographic sections are omitted.
What does the SSA popularity chart show?
The chart tracks births, not the number of people alive with the name today. Each point shows how many babies were given the name Stephen in that year. That makes it useful for spotting when the name rose, peaked, or faded.
Is Stephen a male name?
Yes, 99.7% of people registered as Stephen in the SSA data are male. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Is Stephen still being used today?
Yes. The SSA still recorded Stephen in 2024, and the page above shows its latest-year rank where available. A name can be well past its peak and still remain in steady use, especially if it built up a large population over earlier decades.
Why can a name have a lot of living bearers even if it is not trendy now?
Because living-bearer counts and current baby-name popularity measure different things. A name like Stephen can build up a very large population over many decades, even if fewer parents are choosing it now than they did at its peak.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.
How many people share the name Stephen?
You can see how many people share the name Stephen on our sister site HowManyOfMe.org — same data roots, lighter UI.