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Abel vs Abelardo

American parents have registered 66,198 Abels since 1880, against 4,816 Abelardos. Abel is still ahead, with 1,530 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Abel against Abelardo, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Abel Abelardo

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Abel has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1936, when Abel had 75 and Abelardo had 36.

Side by side

  Abel Abelardo
Total US births 66,1984,816
Most in one year 3,25599
Babies in 2025 1,53044
Estimated living today 61,0003,800
Median age today 1332
Peak year 20152002
Best rank 124th boys1,332nd boys
Rank in 2025 231st2,833rd
First recorded 18801914
Girls / boys 161 / 66,0370 / 4,816

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Abelardos alive today are over 32; half the Abels are over 13. That is 19 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Abel Abelardo
France 29,5655

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Abel and Abelardo.