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Alban vs Albert

American parents have registered 494,420 Alberts since 1880, against 1,000 Albans. Albert is still ahead, with 461 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Alban against Albert, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Alban Albert

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

Albert 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 2012, when Alban had 25 and Albert had 725.

Side by side

  Alban Albert
Total US births 1,000494,420
Most in one year 2510,204
Babies in 2025 6461
Estimated living today 650172,000
Median age today 2661
Peak year 20121921
Best rank 4,003rd boys20th boys
Rank in 2025 10,695th614th
First recorded 19121880
Girls / boys 0 / 1,0002,559 / 491,861

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 Alberts alive today are over 61; half the Albans are over 26. That is 35 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 Alban Albert
France 29,495204,385
England and Wales 35616,693
Belgium 404380
Switzerland 221298
Scotland 4269

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: Alban and Albert.