Thornton
#7,679 in the US in 2025
Thornton in the United States
Between 2015 and 2025 the name has been steady.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Thornton in New Zealand
Thornton never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1880 | #526 | 12 |
| 1890 | #884 | 6 |
| 1900 | #785 | 11 |
| 1910 | #654 | 20 |
| 1920 | #812 | 68 |
| 1930 | #990 | 47 |
| 1940 | #1,135 | 34 |
| 1950 | #1,139 | 39 |
| 1960 | #1,973 | 17 |
| 1970 | #2,739 | 12 |
| 1980 | #2,617 | 18 |
| 1990 | #3,607 | 16 |
| 2000 | #5,588 | 12 |
| 2010 | below floor | — |
| 2020 | #8,739 | 8 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Thornton most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| Virginia | 124 |
| Texas | 45 |
| New York | 27 |
| Alabama | 25 |
| Illinois | 20 |
| Kentucky | 20 |
| Maryland | 16 |
| Ohio | 11 |
| Pennsylvania | 11 |
| California | 10 |
How these figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- Each country hides small numbers — the US below 5 births a year, New Zealand below 10. A gap in a line is "below the floor", never "nobody".
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026