Humanverse

Bay vs Baylie

American parents have registered 3,498 Baylies since 1880, against 727 Bays. Baylie is still ahead, with 28 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bay against Baylie, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bay Baylie

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 48 years in which either name was published, Baylie for 40 years and Bay for 8 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Bay Baylie
Total US births 7273,498
Most in one year 81234
Babies in 2025 728
Estimated living today 7003,500
Median age today 1221
Peak year 20142007
Best rank 2,412th girls1,105th girls
Rank in 2025 11,932nd4,758th
First recorded 19161984
Girls / boys 523 / 2043,472 / 26

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 Baylies alive today are over 21; half the Bays are over 12. That is 9 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 Bay Baylie
England and Wales 367129

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: Bay and Baylie.