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Bayan vs Bayley

American parents have registered 2,656 Bayleys since 1880, against 1,267 Bayans. But in 2025 it was Bayan that was commoner, 89 babies to 31.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Bayan Bayley

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 43 years in which either name was published, Bayley for 36 years and Bayan for 7 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Bayan Bayley
Total US births 1,2672,656
Most in one year 89206
Babies in 2025 8931
Estimated living today 1,3002,600
Median age today 1024
Peak year 20251997
Best rank 2,099th girls1,204th girls
Rank in 2025 2,099th4,460th
First recorded 19851982
Girls / boys 1,152 / 1152,221 / 435

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 Bayleys alive today are over 24; half the Bayans are over 10. That is 14 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 Bayan Bayley
England and Wales 1991,007

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: Bayan and Bayley.