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Ashby vs Ashton

American parents have registered 107,927 Ashtons since 1880, against 2,398 Ashbys. Ashton is still ahead, with 1,886 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ashby against Ashton, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ashby Ashton

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, Ashton for 114 years and Ashby for 19 years. The lead changed hands 25 times.

18 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Ashby Ashton
Total US births 2,398107,927
Most in one year 565,847
Babies in 2025 131,886
Estimated living today 1,700106,000
Median age today 2217
Peak year 20172004
Best rank 3,440th boys76th boys
Rank in 2025 6,446th197th
First recorded 18801881
Girls / boys 743 / 1,65519,660 / 88,267

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 Ashbys alive today are over 22; half the Ashtons are over 17. That is 5 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 Ashby Ashton
England and Wales 1910,357

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: Ashby and Ashton.