Boy Names Starting With N

Ranks are each name's overall position among all 2025 boy names, so the gaps between rows are real — the names in between simply start with other letters. Want a random shortlist instead? Spin N boy names in the generator, or browse the full top 100 boy names.

How common N names are

21 of the 1,000 most-registered boy names of 2025 start with N, and together they account for 3.4% of the births in that list — the 14th-largest share among the 26 initials. From Noah at overall #2 (20,358 births) down to Neal, the 50th name, at #1,914 (82), the first count on the table is 248.3 times the last.

That 3.4% is N's births inside the 2025 top 1,000 divided by the births of all 1,000 names — the convention the reading ranks and counts guide walks through — and the 21-name count is taken at that same depth, not at the 50-name depth of the table above.

N names across the decades

In 1955, 4 boy names starting with N sat inside the top 200, led by Norman (#102); in 2015 the count was 5, led by Noah (#1). The largest of the 7 counts is 6 (2005) and the smallest is 3 (1985). Cut to the same top-200 depth, the 2025 list holds 7 N names, led by Noah at #2. 4 different names hold the lead across those snapshots: Norman, Nathan, Nicholas, and Noah. 1 of the 50 names on the 2025 table appears in every one of the 7 snapshot top-200 lists: Nicholas.

N names held 0.48% of the top-200 births for boys in 1955 and 4.0% in 2015; at the same depth in 2025 the figure is 4.5%. The first-letter trends guide sets N's share beside the other 25 initials for every snapshot year from 1955 to 2015, for both sexes.

Faded and new

Every N boy name that appears in any snapshot's top 200 is also on the 2025 list of 50 above, so no faded names exist for this letter at the committed depths.

Of the 50 names above, 42 appear in none of the 7 snapshot top-200 lists: the first 12 by rank are Nico (#174), Nash (#255), Niko (#325), Nehemiah (#429), Noel (#478), Nasir (#487), Nikolai (#605), Nathanael (#632), Nikolas (#719), Neithan (#723), Noe (#755), and Nelson (#825), and the remaining 30 follow in the table above.

Absence is relative to the committed depth: the snapshot files stop at rank 200 and the 2025 letter file stops at N's 50th name (#1,914), so a faded name may still be registered in 2025 below that point, and a newcomer may have been registered in a snapshot year below rank 200.

Shape of the list

Medium spellings of five to seven letters account for 23 of the 50 names on the 2025 list (Nathan, for one); 20 are short at four letters or fewer (Noah, for one), and 7 run to eight letters or more (Nicholas, for one). The longest spellings on the 2025 list, at 9 letters, are Nathaniel and Nathanael; the shortest, at 3, are Noe, Noa, and Neo.

By popularity tier, the list holds 1 top-10 name, 2 more inside the top 100, 9 in the 101–500 band, and 9 in the 501–1,000 band; 29 sit past #1,000, outside the top-1,000 list the generator's 2025 era draws from.

Both sexes' 2025 N lists carry 5 of the same spellings, ranked once per sex: Noah (#2 for boys, #624 for girls), Noel (#478 for boys, #1,395 for girls), Noa (#1,006 for boys, #226 for girls), Nova (#1,308 for boys, #46 for girls), and Navy (#1,558 for boys, #327 for girls). 16 of the 50 spellings on the 2025 list open Ni-, the letter's most common second letter, ahead of Na- (14), and 5 different second letters appear across the list.

N boy names: questions answered from the data

Other letters

Girl names for this letter: girl names starting with N.

Source: every name, rank, and count on this page comes from the U.S. Social Security Administration's national baby-names dataset (2025 data, from Social Security card applications). It is public-domain U.S. government data; names given fewer than 5 times in a year are excluded by the SSA, spelling variants are counted separately, and the data covers U.S. births only. Full caveats on the methodology page.