Name Generator

How popular is the name Harlan?

Births per year, rank history and how many Harlans are alive today.

Harlan (male) is an uncommon boys' name in England and Wales, ranked 474th in 2025 with 82 babies given the name. It was almost as popular in 2017, with 73 babies given the name that year. It has risen strongly over the past decade. Harlan is one spelling of a name also recorded as Harlen; the combined figures below cover every spelling.

Across all spellings of the name, the Harlan you are most likely to meet is around 9 years old. Half of all Harlans born in England and Wales are between 4 and 12, and there are at least 1,300 of them alive today. If you walk into a room of 100 males, there's less than a 1% chance that anyone will be called Harlan - on average, only one in every 234 such rooms contains a Harlan.

How many babies are named Harlan each year?

Includes all spellings: Harlan, Harlen. Figures before 1996 are estimates.

Where does the Harlan spelling rank?

Where does the Harlen spelling rank?

Where this data comes from

Figures from 1996 onwards are the Office for National Statistics' annual baby-name registrations for England and Wales, which record every name given to three or more babies in a year. Figures before 1996 are estimates: the ONS published only top-100 rankings at ten-year intervals back to 1904, so counts for those years are modelled from the rankings, calibrated against Douglas Galbi's long-run research into English name frequencies, and shown with an uncertainty band. Estimates of living bearers combine these birth figures with national life tables and ONS mid-year population estimates.

One limit worth naming: these figures count names as registered at birth. Anyone who changes their name later in life - including trans people, and anyone who adopts a different name by deed poll or simply by use - is not reflected here. Birth registrations record where a name began, not the name a person lives with.