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Baileigh vs Bailey

American parents have registered 132,544 Baileys since 1880, against 2,545 Baileighs. Bailey is still ahead, with 1,584 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Baileigh against Bailey, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Baileigh Bailey

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

Bailey 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 2020, when Baileigh had 68 and Bailey had 1,763.

Side by side

  Baileigh Bailey
Total US births 2,545132,544
Most in one year 1287,437
Babies in 2025 391,584
Estimated living today 2,500129,000
Median age today 1622
Peak year 20101998
Best rank 1,658th girls60th girls
Rank in 2025 3,780th208th
First recorded 19881880
Girls / boys 2,545 / 0110,806 / 21,738

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 Baileys alive today are over 22; half the Baileighs are over 16. That is 6 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 Baileigh Bailey
England and Wales 12418,350
Scotland 31,338

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: Baileigh and Bailey.