Humanverse

Ace vs Acey

American parents have registered 26,483 Aces since 1880, against 506 Aceys. Ace is still ahead, with 2,250 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ace against Acey, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ace Acey

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

Of the 133 years in which either name was published, Ace for 132 years and Acey for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Ace Acey
Total US births 26,483506
Most in one year 2,51717
Babies in 2025 2,2507
Estimated living today 25,000290
Median age today 528
Peak year 20221924
Best rank 152nd boys2,473rd boys
Rank in 2025 164thunranked
First recorded 18821886
Girls / boys 164 / 26,31965 / 441

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 Aceys alive today are over 28; half the Aces are over 5. That is 23 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Ace Acey
England and Wales 1,5036

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: Ace and Acey.