Nan — girls' name

What the Data Says About Nan

The Social Security Administration has registered 10,274 babies named Nan between 1880 and 2022, spanning 143 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Nan currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 2022. The name reached its historical peak in 1947, when 255 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Nan performed strongest in the 1950s, accumulating 2,181 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Nan shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in New York, which accounts for 720 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Texas and Pennsylvania. In total, SSA state-level files list Nan in 35 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Nan in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 10,274 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.