Humanverse

Barak vs Bart

American parents have registered 16,361 Barts since 1880, against 929 Baraks. But in 2025 it was Barak that was commoner, 8 babies to fewer than five.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Barak against Bart, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Barak Bart

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 144 years in which either name was published, Bart for 115 years and Barak for 29 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Barak Bart
Total US births 92916,361
Most in one year 291,022
Babies in 2025 8under 5
Estimated living today 88012,000
Median age today 3059
Peak year 20061959
Best rank 3,524th boys249th boys
Rank in 2025 8,910thunranked
First recorded 19531880
Girls / boys 0 / 9295 / 16,356

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 Barts alive today are over 59; half the Baraks are over 30. That is 29 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 Barak Bart
England and Wales 717

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: Barak and Bart.