Payton — #381 US unisex name

What the Data Says About Payton

The Social Security Administration has registered 59,329 babies named Payton between 1966 and 2024, spanning 59 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Payton currently holds the #381 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 2009, when 3,646 babies received it in a single year. Payton is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 24,626 additional births since 1880.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Payton performed strongest in the 2000s, accumulating 23,379 births during that ten-year window. Across the 7 decades of recorded activity, Payton shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Texas, which accounts for 4,860 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by California and Ohio. In total, SSA state-level files list Payton in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Payton 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 59,329 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.