Humanverse

Bakari vs Baker

American parents have registered 8,982 Bakers since 1880, against 1,687 Bakaris. Baker is still ahead, with 1,765 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bakari against Baker, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bakari Baker

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 98 years in which either name was published, Baker for 67 years and Bakari for 31 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Bakari Baker
Total US births 1,6878,982
Most in one year 941,765
Babies in 2025 941,765
Estimated living today 1,6008,600
Median age today 203
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 1,728th boys217th boys
Rank in 2025 1,728th217th
First recorded 19731895
Girls / boys 0 / 1,687748 / 8,234

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 Bakaris alive today are over 20; half the Bakers are over 3. That is 17 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 Bakari Baker
England and Wales 969

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

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Bakari and Baker.