Nixon
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Son Of Nick
- Origin
- English
About the Name Nixon
Nixon descends from the Old English patronymic surname meaning "son of Nick" or "son of Nicholas" (see separate entry on Nicholas for the Greek Nikolaos etymology meaning "victory of the people"). The Nixon surname has been used continuously in English-speaking countries since the medieval period.
The name's overwhelming modern American cultural anchor is US president Richard Nixon (using Nixon as a surname, 1913–1994, the 37th US President 1969–1974, who became the iconic figure of the Watergate scandal and resigned the presidency in August 1974 — the only US president ever to resign — anchoring the Nixon name in mid-20th-century American political memory).
Other notable bearers include American actor Cynthia Nixon (using Nixon as a surname, born 1966, the iconic American actress of HBO's Sex and the City 1998–2004); American basketball player Nixon Aguilar; and the contemporary fictional Nixon of various contemporary novels. The name's transition from surname to American first name accelerated through the 2000s and 2010s, riding the broader American taste for surname-style first names alongside Cason, Carter, and Mason. Nixon's American climb is recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2010 to the US top 300 boys' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the in-built Nicholas-Greek-classical pedigree (despite the Watergate cultural-historical complexity), and the popular two-syllable -on ending family (Nixon, Mason, Hudson, Easton). 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 Nick (back-end shortening, the related shorter form, a popular standalone name on its own), Nicky, and the rare Xon each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Nixon and Nyxon have their own SSA tracking. International forms include the broader Nicholas/Nikolaos family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Nixon
US Popularity History (2011–2024)
Annual US births named Nixon by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2017 with 607 boys named Nixon (boy rank #482 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2024, ranked #873 for boys (275 US births). That's 391 places below its 2017 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 Nixon 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 Nixon the strongest states are Utah, Hawaii, Idaho.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Utah | #117 | 445 |
| 2 | Hawaii | #129 | 79 |
| 3 | Idaho | #274 | 88 |
| 4 | Nevada | #356 | 71 |
| 5 | Nebraska | #409 | 25 |
| 6 | California | #412 | 885 |
| 7 | Arizona | #418 | 203 |
| 8 | Iowa | #432 | 33 |
| 9 | Oklahoma | #561 | 49 |
| 10 | South Carolina | #581 | 22 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Missouri | #883 | 28 |
| 2 | Ohio | #830 | 84 |
| 3 | North Carolina | #821 | 93 |
| 4 | Washington | #814 | 53 |
| 5 | Texas | #800 | 264 |
| 6 | Pennsylvania | #779 | 57 |
| 7 | Virginia | #751 | 53 |
| 8 | Indiana | #744 | 41 |
| 9 | Florida | #737 | 105 |
| 10 | Tennessee | #717 | 35 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Nixon in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Nixon?
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 Nixon to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Nixon against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).