Noah, not John: how boys’ names moved from the New Testament to the Old

In 1880 one American boy in twelve was called John. One in twenty was a James. Add Thomas, Andrew, Peter and Paul and the New Testament had one American boy in six. The Old Testament had one in twelve, and most of that was Joseph.

In 2017 the Old Testament had one American boy in six and the New Testament one in fourteen. In England and Wales last year it was one boy in nine against one in 24. Noah is the second most popular boys' name in both countries. John is 174th here. The Bible did not go out of fashion. Parents turned to the front of it.

How we counted

A Bible name, for this article, is the name of a person in the King James Bible, spelled the way the King James Bible spells it, plus the two archangels Michael and Gabriel. We allow a short list of standard modern spellings, Elizabeth for Elisabeth, Phoebe for Phebe, Nicholas for Nicolas, and the full list is in this page's notes. A name belongs to the Old Testament if the person is in the Old Testament, whatever the spelling, so Elias and Jonas count as Old Testament names. A name is New Testament only if its person appears there alone: John, James, Peter, Paul, Mary, Martha.

Everything else is out. Pet names and cut-down names are out: Jack, Jake, Josh, Sam, Ben, Danny. Forms from other languages are out: Sean, Ian, Evan, Juan, Yusuf, Ibrahim, Maryam. Modern forms that the Bible never spells are out: Zachary, Jaxon. Places are out: Eden, Jordan, Sharon, Bethany, Zion. That makes the New Testament figure a hard one, because John has more disguises than any name in English, and we come back to that at the end.

The rule counts the spelling, not the reason. Adam, Daniel and Aaron are Quranic names as well as Bible names, Omar is in Genesis, and we cannot see why a parent chose anything. Boys and girls are counted from their own lists in the official files, never from our own gender label. The American counts are from 2017, the newest full count we hold, and the American rankings run to 2025. The long American series, 1880 to 2008, covers the top 1,000 names each year, so every figure from it is a floor.

1880: John, James and Joseph

The Social Security Administration's records start in 1880, and that year 26.5% of American boys had a Bible name, one in four. The New Testament took 18.2% of them: John 8.15% (it was the number one boys' name in America every year from 1880 to 1923), James 5.0%, Thomas 2.1%, Andrew 0.5%, Peter 0.4%. The Old Testament took 8.3%: Joseph 2.2%, Samuel 0.9%, David 0.7%, Daniel 0.5%, Jesse 0.5%, Benjamin 0.4%. The Old Testament had far more names in use, 66 in the top 1,000 against 32, because it has far more people in it. It just had none of the big ones.

Both halves then fell. The Old Testament reached its low in 1932, 5.0%, one boy in 20, and Bible names together reached theirs in 1928, 18.8%. The names that filled the gap were Robert, William, Richard, Donald and Charles, none of them in either Testament.

The crossing

The Old Testament came back through two names. David was 18th in 1880 and 7th in 1940; in 1960 it was the most popular boys' name in America, 4.0% of boys. Michael was 46th in 1880 and 18th in 1940; it was number one from 1954 to 1998, 44 years running, and was 3.9% of boys in 1960. The New Testament held on. James was number one from 1940 to 1952, Mark was 2.7% of boys in 1960 with Steven and Timothy behind it, and in 1956 the New Testament reached its record, 19.3% of boys, one in five.

Then the 1970s brought Joshua, Jonathan, Jacob and Adam on one side and Jason and Matthew on the other, and in 1980 the Old Testament went in front for the first time, 18.5% to 17.7%. It has been in front every year since. 1981 is the record year for the Old Testament, 19.3%, one boy in five, and the record year for Bible names altogether: 36.8% of American boys, more than one in three. Michael was first, and Matthew, Jason, David, Joshua, James and John were all in the top eight.

Michael is a big part of this, so here is the count without it: the Old Testament passes the New in 1991 instead of 1980. The crossing is real either way.

After 1981 the New Testament fell and did not stop: 14.7% in 1990, 10.8% in 2000, 8.0% in 2008. John was 8th in 1980 and 20th in 2008. The Old Testament drifted down more slowly, 17.7%, 17.3%, 15.7%, with Jacob number one from 1999 to 2008. By 2008 it was one boy in six against one in twelve, the 1880 picture turned round.

The full American files, which count every name given to five or more babies, carry it on. In 1990 the Old Testament had 18.7% of boys and the New 15.5%. In 2017 it was 15.5% against 7.2%: one boy in six against one in fourteen. Noah went to 18,326 boys that year, Benjamin to 13,733, Elijah to 13,268, Jacob to 13,106. The biggest New Testament name was James, 14,232, then Lucas 12,951, Alexander 12,467 and Matthew 11,611. John had 9,434.

Not the same Old Testament

The names doing the work have changed as well. The Old Testament names of 1880 were the ones everybody knew: Joseph, Samuel, David, Daniel, Benjamin. The ones America is picking now were nowhere. Ezra was 270th in 1880 and 966th in 1960; it is 20th. Levi was 118th, then 590th; it is 12th. Asher was 822nd in 1880 and then outside the top 1,000 for most of a century; it is 28th. Josiah, Ezekiel, Micah and Judah were all outside the top 1,000 in 1960 and are all inside the top 180 now. Elijah was 581st in 1960 and is 7th. Noah was 668th in 1960, number one in 2015 and second now.

The rankings since 2015 show the two halves of the Old Testament moving in opposite directions. The names of the 1980s and 1990s are falling: Jacob 4th to 43rd, Ethan 6th to 24th, Michael 9th to 21st, David 18th to 35th, Joshua 33rd to 66th, Nathan 38th to 63rd, Caleb 37th to 58th, Jonathan 48th to 89th, Adam 73rd to 101st. The prophets and the patriarchs are climbing: Levi 42nd to 12th, Elias 100th to 13th, Ezra 92nd to 20th, Asher 82nd to 28th, Ezekiel 146th to 61st, Adriel 287th to 84th. Further down, Cyrus, Hezekiah and Azariah each climbed about 200 places, and Boaz, Abner, Ira and Jethro came into the top 1,000 from outside it. There are 70 Old Testament names in the American top 1,000 in 2025. There were 66 in 1880 and 41 in 1942.

The New Testament has two names climbing, James, 7th to 6th, and Lucas, 16th to 10th, plus Silas at 71st from 128th. The rest are going down: Alexander 8th to 30th, Matthew 15th to 32nd, Andrew 30th to 73rd, Nicholas 62nd to 112th, Jason 86th to 165th, Stephen 246th to 383rd.

Britain: one boy in nine

The Office for National Statistics counted 273,652 boys born in England and Wales in 2025. 28,867 of them, 10.6%, one in nine, got an Old Testament name. 11,616, 4.2%, one in 24, got a New Testament one. Twenty of the top 100 boys' names are Old Testament: Noah 2nd with 4,075 boys, Elijah 23rd, Adam 26th, Reuben 29th, Isaac 36th, Ezra 38th, Jacob 41st, Jesse 51st, Joshua 53rd, Ethan 54th, Joseph 59th, Benjamin 61st, Daniel 62nd, Samuel 66th, Elias 69th, David 73rd, Gabriel 80th, Caleb 82nd, Michael 85th and Nathan 99th. Six are New Testament: Jude 14th with 2,153, Lucas 32nd, Thomas 35th, Alexander 40th, James 42nd and Felix 59th.

The apostles have gone. John went to 296 boys, 174th, fewer than Jesse or Elias. Matthew 353, Peter 158, Mark 156, Andrew 127, Simon 63, Paul 64, Stephen 49. Jack, which we do not count, went to 1,595 boys and is 24th. The 2024 file says the same thing, 10.8% and 4.6%, so this is not one odd year.

Britain uses the Bible less than America for boys, one in seven against one in four and a half, but it uses the same end of it: two and a half Old Testament boys for every New Testament boy here, two and a bit there. What differs is which names. Per head, Reuben is 37 times commoner here than in America (1,412 boys against 235), Jude five times, Felix three times, Jesse three times, Adam nearly twice, Ezra one and a half times, Noah 1.4 times. Andrew is ten times commoner in America, Jonathan seven times, Matthew and John five times, Josiah five times, Isaiah three and a half, Levi and Asher nearly three. America's New Testament is Matthew, Andrew and John. Britain's is Jude, Felix, Thomas and Lucas.

Girls left the Bible

Girls are a different story, and a shorter one. In 1880 one American girl in seven had a New Testament name, and half of those were Mary: 7.2% of all girls, one in 14, and the number one girls' name in America in 76 of the years from 1880 to 1961. Anna was 2.7%, Elizabeth 2.0%, Martha 1.1%. The Old Testament had one girl in 36, nearly all Sarah.

The Old Testament never got above one girl in 20 (1952, when Deborah was the fourth most popular girls' name in America, with Judith 10th a few years before), but the New Testament fell from under it. Mary was 2.5% of girls in 1960, 0.6% in 1980 and 0.2% in 2008, when it was 97th. The lines crossed in 1972, eight years before the boys', and the Old Testament has led since, on Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel in 1980 and Hannah and Abigail by 2000. In 2017 it was one girl in 38 against one in 50: Abigail 10,551, Hannah 5,872, Leah 5,159, Sarah 3,986, Naomi 3,823, Delilah 2,873; Elizabeth 8,915, Chloe 6,912, Anna 4,520, Lydia 3,311, Mary 2,381.

But the whole Bible, both Testaments, went from one American girl in six in 1880 to one in 21 in 2017, and in England and Wales in 2025 it is one girl in 28. Here the two Testaments are level, 4,676 girls to 4,522, and the biggest Bible name for girls is New Testament: Phoebe, 14th, 1,542 girls, nine times commoner here than in America per head. The biggest Old Testament name is Delilah, 32nd with 1,180, then Hannah 105th, Sarah 131st, Esther 150th. Mary went to 131 girls. Boys changed Testament. Girls mostly stopped using the book.

What we cannot tell you

Why. The files say what parents wrote, not what they had in mind, and a Noah is a Noah whether or not anyone thought of the ark. The rule is a judgement, and the New Testament pays for it: John lives on as Jack, Sean, Ian and Evan, and none of those is counted, so the New Testament line is a hard count of the Bible's own spellings and nothing more. Add Jack back in and England and Wales has 13,211 New Testament boys instead of 11,616, still one in 21. Nor can we say when Britain made the same turn. We hold two years of the ONS file, 2024 and 2025, and they agree with each other.

What it means for you

If you want a Bible name that sounds like now, the data says the prophets: Ezra, Levi, Asher, Elijah, Josiah, Micah, Ezekiel are all climbing in America and all in use here. If you want one that sounds like your grandfather, the apostles are free: Peter, Paul, Mark, Andrew and Simon went to fewer than 160 boys each in England and Wales last year. And if you want a Bible name for a girl, you will be in a small minority either way, one in 28, with Phoebe and Delilah as the two that anyone else is using.