Norman

109,382 people in America carry this name — ranked #518 of 923.

Its American moment came before the war.

Say it NAWR muhn

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

N AO1 R M AH0 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 109,382 2020 Census
  • Per 100,000 36.2 about 1 in 3,030 people
  • As a surname 63,944 ranked #514 the other way round

Where Norman comes from and what it means

Teutonic in origin, reading literally as “Niord’s man”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Norman has been given

253,943 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1928, with 5,637 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30s 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1930s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Norman

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Norman Nicholas — runs together
  • Norman Nathan — runs together
  • Norman Noah — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

A name and a surname

Norman is carried in front of the comma and behind it — thousands of Americans have it as a surname too.

Is Norman a boy's or a girl's name?

99.6% men
446 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

The states where Norman is most common

In Maine the name is given 2.6 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Maine ×2.6
  • Alaska ×2.6
  • the District of Columbia ×2.2
  • Rhode Island ×2.1
  • Hawaii ×2.0

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The likeliest full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

How to spell Norman

Norman is how 43% of them spell it — 252,301 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 77.2%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 11.9%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 4.2%
  • Two or more races — 2.2%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 3.5%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 1.0%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Same syllables and stress as Norman

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

The same name elsewhere

  • Tormaid Gaelic

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Try it How Rare Is It?

Where this name sits between household and almost unheard of.

Common

  • People counted109,382
  • Rank#518
  • Roughly1 in 3,030 people

Open the full entry

Open How Rare Is It? on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Teutonic origin