Preston is a name of English origin, derived from a place name. It is made up of the Old English words ‘prest’ and ‘tun’ meaning ‘priest’ and ‘town’, respectively. The name can be thought of as meaning ‘priest’s town’ or ‘town of the priests’.
Preston is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Preston isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Preston ranks 179. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 12 were named Preston. In the entire USA, approximately 114,272 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Preston. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
Preston is a name of English origin, derived from a place name. It is made up of the Old English words ‘prest’ and ‘tun’ meaning ‘priest’ and ‘town’, respectively. The name can be thought of as meaning ‘priest’s town’ or ‘town of the priests’.
Through the centuries,... many ships were called Preston. There was an East Indiaman launched in 1798, and a frigate launched in 1653, for example.
For more than 140 years, parents decide to name their son Preston annualy. This means that there have been boys named Preston who witnessed the first Labor Day parade in the U.S. or followed Albert Einstein's career. The name has 'always been there', but never ranked in the top 100, and thus men named Preston have consistently been special. Since 2000, however, the name has experienced a certain popularity: in 2007, it holds its present record of #110 in the list of the most popular boys' names.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Preston was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Preston has never been ranked higher than #110. In 2022, he rivaled the 246 names that preceded him on the list. In total, 1,360 boys named Preston were born in this year. For comparison: 30 years earlier, in 1992, when possibly the parents of the now very young Preston were born, there have been 1,528 newborns who received this name.
The name Preston may not be in the top rankings of the most popular boys’ names, but it is one of the few male given names, along with only 385 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Preston is apparently especially popular in Utah. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 508 men in Utah is called Preston. In total, that’s 2,682 people who feel addressed when the name Preston is shouted loudly across Utah and who ensure that their name makes it to #134 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names in this nice state. If you asked all people in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Preston as the answer a total of 114,272 times. This places Preston at #262 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular male names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living people across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Preston as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter P is quite rare as an initial letter for boys' names: only 1.5% of all common boys' names in the US begin with P, which means that this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. But P is by no means the rarest initial. While X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names, the most common first letters of boys' names are J, A and D.
With seven letters, the name Preston has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight letters or more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
From this follows that if 1.5% of all boys' names begin with a P, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Incidentally, of the comparatively few boys' names that begin with a P, Paul is currently the most common.
If your name is Preston and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Preston, you can simply say:
Pig
Rocket
Elephant
Sun
Tiger
Orange
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Preston
Preston
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
P
R
E
S
T
O
N
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
P
R
E
S
T
O
N
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Preston sounds like this:
