girls:
17 births since 1981
#5699 (0th percentile)
boys:
21.4k births since 1915
#784 (83rd percentile)
overall:
21.4k births since 1915
#1746 (77th percentile)
The name Nathanael is the #1,746 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 21,383 recorded births since 1915. This represents the 77.4% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 77.4% of all names). For boys, it ranks #784 (82.9% percentile) for all time with 21,366 births since 1915. For girls, it ranks #5,699 (0.3% percentile) for all time with 17 births since 1981.
Nathanael first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1915 (1915 for boys and 1981 for girls). Birth data for Nathanael is available in 96 out of the 109 years between 1915 and 2023 (96 years for boys and 3 years for girls). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Nathanael has been given almost exclusively to boys, with 99.9% of all recorded births being male.
For boys, Nathanael reached its peak popularity in 2000, achieving the 53.1% percentile (ranked #382) with 292 births per million. The name was most common in 1998, with 296 births per million (ranked 52.1% percentile). Despite a low point around 2014, the name has seen a recent decline in popularity for boys. Currently, Nathanael ranks #575 for boys (36.9% percentile) with 200 births per million, which is 67.7% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Nathanael reached its peak popularity in 1987, achieving the 0.3% percentile (ranked #800) with 4 births per million. The name was most common in 1987, with 4 births per million (ranked 0.3% percentile). In recent years, the popularity of this name for girls has remained relatively stable. Currently, Nathanael ranks #947 for girls (0.0% percentile) with 3 births per million, which is 76.5% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Nathanael".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Nathaniel. View all variations of Nathaniel.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Nathanael", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 20 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Nathaniel" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Nathaniel..
Our model has identified 8 different pronunciations for the name Nathanael. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 47.9% confident that Nathanael is pronounced as nuh-THA-nyuhl, which has 3 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is NA-thuh-nayl, at 12.5% confidence, with 3 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Nathanael? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Nathanael. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Nathanael, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like N AH0 TH AE1 N Y AH0 L) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
© 2025 NamePlay.org
Made with ❤️ by Aaron J Becker