Keaton
- Pronunciation
- [Kea-ton]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Place Of The Hawks.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Keaton
Keaton descends from the Old English place-name meaning "place of the hawks" or "hawk's homestead" — composed of cyta (a kind of hawk or kite) plus tun (homestead, settlement). The name first appears as an English surname referring to those from such places.
The name's overwhelming modern American cultural anchor is the iconic American silent-film actor Buster Keaton (using Keaton as a surname, Joseph Frank Keaton, 1895–1966, the iconic American silent-film actor and filmmaker whose career through the 1920s made him one of the foundational figures of early-20th-century American comedy and cinema). Other notable bearers include American actress Diane Keaton (using Keaton as a surname, Diane Hall, 1946–2025, the iconic American Oscar-winning actress of Annie Hall 1977 and The Godfather series); American actor Michael Keaton (using Keaton as a surname, born 1951, the iconic American actor of Tim Burton's Batman 1989); and the iconic Family Ties Keaton family of NBC's 1980s sitcom (1982–1989).
The name's transition from surname to American first name accelerated through the 1990s and 2000s, riding the broader American taste for surname-style first names alongside Mason, Hudson, and Carter. Keaton's American climb is recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 1995 to the US top 300 boys' rank by 2014 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the strong Buster Keaton and Diane Keaton American cultural anchors, and the popular two-syllable -ton ending family (Keaton, Easton, Paxton, Brixton). Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Anglo-Saxon and contemporary American. Common nicknames Keat (the dominant short form, casual and warm), Kee, and the rare Ton each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Keaton and Keatyn have their own SSA tracking. International forms include the original Old English cyta + tun.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Keaton
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Keaton by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2007 with 881 boys named Keaton (boy rank #358 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #771 for boys (333 US births). That's 413 places below its 2007 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Keaton Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Keaton the strongest states are West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Virginia | #272 | 48 |
| 2 | Nebraska | #349 | 24 |
| 3 | Idaho | #367 | 25 |
| 4 | Iowa | #371 | 98 |
| 5 | Arkansas | #404 | 73 |
| 6 | Oklahoma | #407 | 99 |
| 7 | Kentucky | #416 | 113 |
| 8 | Indiana | #440 | 165 |
| 9 | Missouri | #452 | 131 |
| 10 | Mississippi | #460 | 53 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #964 | 116 |
| 2 | Maryland | #787 | 17 |
| 3 | Florida | #755 | 131 |
| 4 | Arizona | #746 | 47 |
| 5 | Texas | #741 | 332 |
| 6 | Louisiana | #734 | 19 |
| 7 | Virginia | #711 | 79 |
| 8 | Illinois | #701 | 133 |
| 9 | North Carolina | #689 | 119 |
| 10 | Michigan | #658 | 104 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Keaton in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Keaton?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Keaton to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Keaton against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).