How popular is the name Claude?
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About 32,720 men and 709 women in the United States were named Claude at the 2020 census, ranking the name 537th among men. Thirty years earlier the 1990 census counted 169,123 men named Claude, ranked 230th. The name has become less popular over the decades.
Social Security records show 40 boys named Claude in 2025, ranking 3,044th among boys' names for the year. That works out to roughly one in every 46,000 boys born. The name's peak came in 1920, when 1,893 newborn boys received it and it ranked 92nd. Its best ranking was 46th, in 1887.
| Year | Boys named Claude | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| 1900 | 433 | 59 |
| 1920 | 1,893 | 92 |
| 1940 | 1,194 | 145 |
| 1960 | 837 | 277 |
| 1980 | 268 | 524 |
| 2000 | 99 | 1,302 |
| 2010 | 55 | 2,332 |
| 2020 | 44 | 2,768 |
| 2025 | 40 | 3,044 |
Across every year from 1880 to 2025, Social Security has recorded 91,337 boys named Claude. Fewer than 100 a year have received the name since 2000, so nearly all living Claudes were born before 1970, and most before 1950. The name belongs overwhelmingly to men now in their seventies, eighties, and nineties.
Will the AI model bump up the name?
Anthropic released its popular Claude chatbot in March 2023, and in 2026, Claude has now become a daily word for millions of people. So it will be interesting to see in the near future if there will be more boys named Claude.
Claudia, the feminine form, is a different story. The 2020 census counted 188,850 women named Claudia, ranking 152nd, nearly six times the number of men named Claude. It is still given to a few hundred girls a year, with 219 in 2025. Claudio, the Italian and Spanish form, was given to 30 boys in 2025 and had 13,911 bearers in the 2020 count.
| Name | People in 2020 census | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Gerald (men) | 257,833 | 95 |
| Harold (men) | 186,203 | 139 |
| Bernard (men) | 82,375 | 299 |
| Clyde (men) | 47,279 | 427 |
| Claude (men) | 32,720 | 537 |
| Claudio (men) | 13,911 | 867 |
| Claudia (women) | 188,850 | 152 |
| Claude (women) | 709 | 9,801 |
A Southern name
Claude ranks highest in the South. In the state-level counts it places 175th among men's names in Mississippi, 177th in Tennessee, 182nd in Virginia, 189th in South Carolina, 191st in North Carolina, and 194th in West Virginia. North Carolina has the most men named Claude of any state, at 5,410, followed by Virginia with 4,425 and Tennessee with 4,291. Those six are the only states where the name places high enough to appear in the state rankings.
As a surname, Claude is rarer still: 2,060 people had the Claude surname in 2020, ranking 14,014th. The surname has shifted in who holds it. In 2000 it was 49 percent white and 42 percent Black. By 2020 it was 54 percent Black and 36 percent white.
The name is French, from the Roman family name Claudius. Its 20th-century American bearers included the actor Claude Rains and the mathematician Claude Shannon, whose 1948 paper founded the field of information theory that underlies modern computing. The most famous Claude is probably the French painter Claude Monet.
The Social Security figures for 2026 will be released in May 2027. Every first name and surname in the country can be looked up on the names page, and the full rankings are at name rankings.
Sources
Counts of living people by first name and rank are from the U.S. Census Bureau's 1990 and 2020 first-name tabulations. Annual birth counts and ranks are from the Social Security Administration's national baby names file, 1880 through 2025, which records names given to at least five babies of one sex in a year. State figures are from the Census Bureau's 2020 state-level first-name tabulation, which lists a name only in states where it ranks in the tracked head of the distribution. Surname counts and racial composition are from the Census Bureau's 2000, 2010, and 2020 surname files. The Anthropic release date is from the company's March 2023 announcement.
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How many people are named Claude in the United States?
The 2020 census counted 32,720 men and 709 women named Claude. Among men's names it ranked 537th. In 1990 there were 169,123 men named Claude, ranked 230th, so the name has lost about four in five of its bearers in thirty years as older Claudes have died and few babies receive the name.
When was the name Claude most popular?
The peak year for births was 1920, when 1,893 boys were named Claude and it ranked 92nd. Its best ranking was 46th, in 1887. The name fell steadily through the 20th century, dropping below 1,000 births a year in the 1950s, below 100 in 2000, and below 50 in 2020.
