Val
#4,539 in the US in 2025
Val in the United States
Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 307% as a share of boys' births.
Val is given to both sexes: 5,657 male and 1,749 female births on record. The two curves rarely move together, which is why they are drawn separately rather than summed.
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
Val in New Zealand
Val 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 1890 | #884 | 6 |
| 1900 | #1,050 | 7 |
| 1910 | #1,421 | 6 |
| 1920 | #1,180 | 37 |
| 1930 | #802 | 65 |
| 1940 | #659 | 84 |
| 1950 | #578 | 138 |
| 1960 | #709 | 122 |
| 1970 | #1,070 | 58 |
| 1980 | #2,213 | 23 |
| 1990 | #3,607 | 16 |
| 2000 | #3,764 | 21 |
| 2010 | #8,803 | 8 |
| 2020 | #10,605 | 6 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Val most often since 1882. 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 |
|---|---|
| Utah | 731 |
| California | 572 |
| Texas | 191 |
| Idaho | 186 |
| New York | 141 |
| Illinois | 124 |
| Pennsylvania | 90 |
| Michigan | 85 |
| Ohio | 77 |
| Louisiana | 24 |
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