Humanverse

Barbara vs Bartolome

American parents have registered 1,440,831 Barbaras since 1880, against 43 Bartolomes. Barbara is still ahead, with 264 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Barbara against Bartolome, 1880 to 2025 0 12.5k 25k 37.5k 50k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Barbara Bartolome

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

Barbara 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 2018, when Barbara had 291 and Bartolome had 5.

Side by side

  Barbara Bartolome
Total US births 1,440,83143
Most in one year 48,8897
Babies in 2025 264under 5
Estimated living today 824,00030
Median age today 7320
Peak year 19471928
Best rank 4th girls3,357th boys
Rank in 2025 968thunranked
First recorded 18801928
Girls / boys 1,436,695 / 4,1360 / 43

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 Barbaras alive today are over 73; half the Bartolomes are over 20. That is 53 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Barbara Bartolome
France 26,200130

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: Barbara and Bartolome.