Colonel
1,250 US births on record
Where Colonel stands
1,250US births · 1880–2025
Colonel has been registered 1,250 times in the United States since 1880. It did not clear the 5-birth reporting floor in 2025, so the SSA published no figure for it that year.
Its moment was 1920, when 37 babies were given it. In 19 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
How Colonel's figures are worked out
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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. Colonel was under the floor in 19 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
Colonel in the United States
Between 1965 and 1987 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
Colonel in New Zealand
Colonel never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
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
Colonel in England & Wales
Colonel does not appear in the ONS list for England and Wales. That means it was given to fewer than 3 babies in every year from 2019 to 2025 — not that it is unused there. ONS publishes only those seven years, so a name that had its moment in England before 2019 is invisible here however common it once was.
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
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1880 | #571 | 11 |
| 1890 | #884 | 6 |
| 1900 | #902 | 9 |
| 1910 | #1,118 | 9 |
| 1920 | #1,180 | 37 |
| 1930 | #2,178 | 13 |
| 1940 | #1,736 | 16 |
| 1950 | #2,019 | 14 |
| 1960 | #2,423 | 12 |
| 1970 | #4,230 | 6 |
| 1980 | #5,525 | 6 |
| 1990 | below floor | <5 |
| 2000 | below floor | <5 |
| 2010 | below floor | <5 |
| 2020 | below floor | <5 |
<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 Colonel 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.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| North Carolina | 48 |
| Alabama | 17 |
| Kentucky | 6 |
| Virginia | 5 |
Questions about Colonel
How popular is the name Colonel?
Colonel did not clear the 5-birth reporting floor in 2025, so no figure was published for it that year. Its best US rank was #397 in 1891.
When was Colonel most popular?
Colonel peaked in 1920, when 37 babies in the United States were given the name.
Is Colonel rising or falling?
Measured as a share of all boys' births, Colonel has been steady between 1965 and 1987.
Names that had their moment when Colonel did
Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1920, 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
