Colton
- Pronunciation
- [Col-ton]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- From The Dark Town
- Origin
- English
About the Name Colton
Colton is an English place-name and surname meaning "coal town" or "coal-blackened settlement" — from Old English col (coal) plus tūn (town, settlement). The surname identified medieval English families originating from villages with this name, particularly in the coal-bearing regions of northern and central England. Colton appears in English records continuously since at least the 13th century.
The name's transition from surname to American first name is essentially a late-20th- and 21st-century phenomenon. SSA records show fewer than a hundred baby Coltons annually before 1980; by 2010 the name had crossed 7,000 annually and entered the US top 100 boys' rank. The contemporary American surge is part of the broader rural-Americana naming trend that includes Hudson, Mason, Carter, and Wyatt — what naming-pattern observers sometimes call "country boy" names.
The name's appeal sits in its strong American register — surname-style, two firm syllables, hard consonants, the suggestion of working-class heritage embedded in the literal meaning, and tonal versatility across casual and slightly more formal registers. Notable contemporary bearers are largely modern or media — country-music singer Colton Dixon, NFL player Colton Underwood (also of The Bachelor television franchise), and various contemporary YouTubers and reality-TV personalities. Common nicknames Colt (the dominant short form, evoking the firearm and the young-horse imagery) and the rare Ton occasionally appear; the alternate spelling Kolton has its own SSA tracking. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is recent and English-American-specific.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Colton
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Colton by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2013 with 6,488 boys named Colton (boy rank #65 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #103 for boys (3,420 US births). That's 38 places below its 2013 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 Colton 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 Colton the strongest states are West Virginia, Kentucky, Maine.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Virginia | #21 | 514 |
| 2 | Kentucky | #27 | 1,171 |
| 3 | Maine | #29 | 287 |
| 4 | New Hampshire | #29 | 328 |
| 5 | Vermont | #36 | 115 |
| 6 | Michigan | #40 | 1,850 |
| 7 | South Carolina | #40 | 922 |
| 8 | Ohio | #42 | 2,321 |
| 9 | Delaware | #42 | 202 |
| 10 | Tennessee | #44 | 1,435 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Utah | #162 | 313 |
| 2 | California | #155 | 2,740 |
| 3 | Texas | #148 | 2,504 |
| 4 | Nevada | #124 | 260 |
| 5 | Arizona | #117 | 703 |
| 6 | New Mexico | #112 | 187 |
| 7 | Arkansas | #105 | 326 |
| 8 | Oklahoma | #105 | 454 |
| 9 | Illinois | #104 | 1,222 |
| 10 | Montana | #102 | 109 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Colton in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Colton?
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 Colton to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Colton against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).