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Arnaud vs Arnold

American parents have registered 104,396 Arnolds since 1880, against 15 Arnauds. Arnold is still ahead, with 120 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Arnaud against Arnold, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Arnaud Arnold

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

Arnold 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 2001, when Arnaud had 5 and Arnold had 219.

Side by side

  Arnaud Arnold
Total US births 15104,396
Most in one year 52,031
Babies in 2025 under 5120
Estimated living today 1438,000
Median age today 3465
Peak year 19811924
Best rank 6,262nd boys95th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,477th
First recorded 19811880
Girls / boys 0 / 15550 / 103,846

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 Arnolds alive today are over 65; half the Arnauds are over 34. That is 31 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 Arnaud Arnold
France 134,7652,600
Belgium 4,13640
Switzerland 86651
England and Wales 36789

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: Arnaud and Arnold.