One subject, in depth · bridged to FuelFacts
NameCurve
Boys' name · 12,850 recorded births

Boston

#620 in the US in 2025

Where Boston stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#620boys’ names · US 2025

Boston was the 620th most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 451 births.

peak 2014 · 497BELOW THE 5-BIRTH FLOOR — NOT PUBLISHED188019532025

Its moment was 2014, when 497 babies were given it. In 43 of the years between, the name fell under the 5-birth floor and the registrar published nothing — those years are the marks along the base of the chart, not gaps in the name's use.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#620US rank, 2025 (boys)
451US births in 2025
#536its best US rank, in 2012
2014peak year — 497 births
10,901US births since 1880
839NZ births since 2001
67E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Boston's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Boston was under the floor in 43 years of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Boston in the United States

18801900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 5-BIRTH FLOOR0.01327
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Boston in the United States, 1880–2025
boysgirls

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Boston in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Boston has been registered 839 times since 2001, peaking in 2007 with 51 births. It ranked #143 for boys in 2025 on 34 births.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.0121243
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Boston in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Boston in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Boston was registered 67 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2021 with 17 births. It ranked #3,255 for boys in 2025 on 6 births. Across those years it has been falling.

2020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 3-BIRTH FLOOR0.02.95.8
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Boston in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#9095
1890below floor<5
1900below floor<5
1910#1,1938
1920#2,33613
1930below floor<5
1940#2,4789
1950#3,0217
1960below floor<5
1970#4,2306
1980#4,9407
1990#2,37329
2000#1,47983
2010#546462
2020#594463

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Boston most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
Utah1,578
Texas924
California638
Oklahoma526
Ohio427
Indiana318
Michigan291
Missouri291
Idaho259
Illinois256

Questions about Boston

How popular is the name Boston?

Boston ranked #620 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 451 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Boston most popular?

Boston peaked in 2014, when 497 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Boston rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all boys' births, Boston has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 2014, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

See what every site in this family answers

Published by

Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.