Quentin
- Pronunciation
- [Quen-tin]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- From The Queen's Estate
- Origin
- English
About the Name Quentin
Quentin descends from the Latin Quintinus, derived from quintus meaning "fifth" — referring originally to the fifth-born child or to the fifth month of the Roman calendar. The name is anchored by Saint Quentin (3rd century CE), the iconic French saint and Christian martyr who was tortured and killed in Picardy, Northern France.
The name's overwhelming modern American cultural anchor is American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino (Quentin Jerome Tarantino, born 1963, the iconic American filmmaker whose career through Pulp Fiction 1994, Kill Bill 2003–2004, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood 2019 made him one of the foundational figures of late-20th and early-21st-century American cinema).
Other notable bearers include the iconic French scientist Quentin Roosevelt (1897–1918, son of US President Theodore Roosevelt, killed in air combat in WWI); American basketball player Quentin Richardson (born 1980, the iconic American NBA player); and the iconic British prison San Quentin State Prison (the iconic California state prison founded 1852, anchored in 20th-century American culture through Johnny Cash's iconic 1969 album At San Quentin). Quentin's American climb has been substantial: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 1985 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 layered Latin-French-Catholic-saint pedigree, the strong Quentin Tarantino American film cultural anchor, and the popular three-syllable -tin ending. Three flowing syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Latin and contemporary American. Common nicknames Quint (back-end shortening), Q (the single-letter shortening), Quenny, Tin, and the rare Quentine each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Quentin, Quinten, and Quintin have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Quintino (Italian/Portuguese), Quintín (Spanish, with accent), Quentin (essentially identical across French/English), and the original Latin Quintinus.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Quentin
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Quentin by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2004 with 913 boys named Quentin (boy rank #330 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #968 for boys (238 US births). That's 638 places below its 2004 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 Quentin 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 Quentin the strongest states are West Virginia, New Mexico, Oregon.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Virginia | #294 | 21 |
| 2 | New Mexico | #399 | 16 |
| 3 | Oregon | #434 | 68 |
| 4 | Nebraska | #437 | 29 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | #468 | 187 |
| 6 | Indiana | #472 | 143 |
| 7 | Ohio | #480 | 212 |
| 8 | Colorado | #481 | 100 |
| 9 | Iowa | #486 | 52 |
| 10 | Washington | #492 | 142 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Texas | #862 | 277 |
| 2 | New York | #769 | 171 |
| 3 | Florida | #744 | 181 |
| 4 | Georgia | #735 | 130 |
| 5 | Tennessee | #718 | 77 |
| 6 | North Carolina | #711 | 117 |
| 7 | Arizona | #708 | 67 |
| 8 | New Jersey | #707 | 82 |
| 9 | Alabama | #673 | 34 |
| 10 | Louisiana | #639 | 41 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Quentin in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quintin | Male | German |
Famous People Named Quentin
2 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Quentin.
- Quentin Crisp was an English writer and one of the popular gay icons of the 1970s.
- Quentin Tarantino — Director (1963)
Looking for names like Quentin?
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 Quentin to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Quentin 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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