Humanverse

Art vs Arther

American parents have registered 6,146 Arts since 1880, against 5,040 Arthers. Art is still ahead, with 34 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Art against Arther, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Art Arther

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 146 years in which either name was published, Art for 86 years and Arther for 60 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

Side by side

  Art Arther
Total US births 6,1465,040
Most in one year 189132
Babies in 2025 345
Estimated living today 3,3001,100
Median age today 6273
Peak year 19611922
Best rank 574th boys546th boys
Rank in 2025 3,379th12,008th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 5 / 6,14147 / 4,993

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 Arthers alive today are over 73; half the Arts are over 62. That is 11 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 Art Arther
England and Wales 2966

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: Art and Arther.