Payton: Meaning of Baby Name Payton

About the Name Payton

Payton is an English name rooted in an Old English place-name compound: Pæga, a personal name element, combined with tūn ("settlement" or "farm"), yielding the meaning "from the fighter's farm" or "Pæga's settlement." The name began as a surname in English records — a topographic identifier for families associated with a particular settlement — before moving into given-name use through the twentieth-century surname-as-first-name fashion. Its two-syllable, consonant-final structure places it squarely in the family of English place-surname names — alongside Peyton, Preston, Dalton, and Weston — that project a confident, grounded masculinity.

The spelling Payton and its close variant Peyton — recorded — are nearly phonetically identical in American English, and the two forms competed for chart position throughout the 2000s. Peyton is the more common spelling, associated strongly with masculine use and with the famous American football quarterback; Payton offers a slight visual differentiation while sharing the same sound and etymological heritage.

Payton first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000, the year it also peaked at #219, and accumulated 17,294 top-1000 births across its tracked run before dropping out of the male charts after 2018, when it ranked #909 with 237 births. Its arc reflects the broader 2000s enthusiasm for -ton surname names and the subsequent gradual fading of that trend as tastes shifted. The recorded variant is Peyton.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Payton

5,642

English baby names in our dictionary

3,391

English male names

120

6-letter P-names in our dictionary

343

P-male names total

2000–2025

years of US SSA records (26 total)

69,918

total US births named Payton (all years)

US Popularity History (2000–2025)

📉 Falling fast: Payton dropped 222 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#218 in 2020 → #440 in 2025).

Annual US births named Payton by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2009 with 3,646 girls named Payton (girl rank #84 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #440 for girls (701 US births). That's 356 places below its 2009 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.

Where in the US Is Payton Most Popular?

Average girl-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 girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Payton the strongest states are Vermont, Wyoming, Alaska.

Strongest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Vermont	#92	23
2	Wyoming	#93	16
3	Alaska	#126	30
4	West Virginia	#134	113
5	Michigan	#153	582
6	Delaware	#161	33
7	Maine	#165	58
8	Wisconsin	#177	304
9	Idaho	#178	115
10	Ohio	#180	631

Weakest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	California	#496	705
2	Nevada	#383	82
3	New Jersey	#378	227
4	Texas	#373	832
5	Virginia	#353	253
6	New York	#352	487
7	Louisiana	#351	166
8	Colorado	#313	190
9	Massachusetts	#308	189
10	Florida	#306	592

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Payton in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Peyton	Patrician: Noble. Form Of Patrick.	Male	Irish

Looking for names like Payton?

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.

See all names like Payton →

Compare Payton to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Payton against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Payton vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Payton vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Payton vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Payton vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Payton vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Payton vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Payton vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Payton vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

Compare to a different name →