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Bailey vs Bailie

American parents have registered 132,544 Baileys since 1880, against 1,654 Bailies. Bailey is still ahead, with 1,584 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Bailey Bailie

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 1990, when Bailey had 1,347 and Bailie had 53.

Side by side

  Bailey Bailie
Total US births 132,5441,654
Most in one year 7,437121
Babies in 2025 1,58410
Estimated living today 129,0001,600
Median age today 2226
Peak year 19981997
Best rank 60th girls1,395th girls
Rank in 2025 208th9,457th
First recorded 18801984
Girls / boys 110,806 / 21,7381,654 / 0

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 Bailies alive today are over 26; half the Baileys are over 22. That is 4 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 Bailey Bailie
England and Wales 18,350220
Scotland 1,33814
Northern Ireland 45542

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: Bailey and Bailie.