Beatrice vs Beau

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Beatrice Beau

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 146 years in which either name was published, Beatrice for 96 years and Beau for 50 years. The lead changed hands once.

• 1880–1975 Beatrice ahead
• 1976–2025 Beau ahead

Side by side

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 Beatrices alive today are over 65; half the Beaus are over 8. That is 57 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Beatrice Vermont (2.4×), Mississippi (2.2×), Maine (2.0×)
• Beau Montana (3.0×), Idaho (3.0×), Utah (2.9×)

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.

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

• Beatrice vs Beatriz
• Beatrice vs Beatrix
• Beatrice vs Bear
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• Beatrice vs Bea
• Beau vs Beatriz
• Beau vs Beatrix
• Beau vs Bear