Van — #905 US boys' name

What the Data Says About Van

The Social Security Administration has registered 29,195 babies named Van between 1880 and 2024, spanning 145 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a boy's name, Van currently holds the #905 rank among boys for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1953, when 572 babies received it in a single year. Van is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 1,754 additional births since 1888.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Van performed strongest in the 1950s, accumulating 5,089 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Van shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in Texas, which accounts for 2,548 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by California and North Carolina. In total, SSA state-level files list Van in 43 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Van 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 29,195 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.