Paxton
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- From The Peaceful Farm
- Origin
- English
About the Name Paxton
Paxton is an English place-name and surname meaning "Pacca's town" — Pacca being an Anglo-Saxon personal name of uncertain origin, plus tūn (town, settlement). The surname appears in English records continuously since the 12th century, and the name's association with the Latin pax (peace) is largely a folk-etymological connection that resonates with modern parents.
Paxton's transition from surname to American first name is essentially a 21st-century phenomenon, riding the broader -ton ending family alongside Easton, Weston, and Ashton. Notable bearers include American actor Bill Paxton (1955–2017, using Paxton as a surname; star of Twister, Apollo 13, Aliens) and contemporary American athletes. The name climbed from outside the US top 500 in 2000 to the US top 200 boys' rank by 2014 and has held that range since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the popular -ton ending family, and the in-built suggestion of peace from the folk-etymological pax connection. Two firm syllables, hard consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-professional. Common nicknames Pax (the dominant short form, casual and modern) and the rare Paxy each carry distinct registers. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is essentially American.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Paxton
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Paxton by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2016 with 1,993 boys named Paxton (boy rank #203 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #338 for boys (988 US births). That's 135 places below its 2016 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 Paxton 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 Paxton the strongest states are Wyoming, Vermont, Mississippi.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wyoming | #100 | 33 |
| 2 | Vermont | #103 | 26 |
| 3 | Mississippi | #135 | 257 |
| 4 | Idaho | #145 | 158 |
| 5 | Montana | #153 | 89 |
| 6 | Washington | #158 | 526 |
| 7 | Alaska | #160 | 27 |
| 8 | South Dakota | #161 | 86 |
| 9 | Hawaii | #162 | 54 |
| 10 | Kentucky | #164 | 310 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Jersey | #516 | 135 |
| 2 | New York | #388 | 432 |
| 3 | California | #370 | 947 |
| 4 | Connecticut | #364 | 70 |
| 5 | Massachusetts | #346 | 151 |
| 6 | Arizona | #339 | 220 |
| 7 | Florida | #337 | 522 |
| 8 | Texas | #319 | 1,112 |
| 9 | Michigan | #309 | 309 |
| 10 | Illinois | #302 | 374 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Paxton in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paxtun | From The Peaceful Farm | Male | English |
Looking for names like Paxton?
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 Paxton to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Paxton against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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