Humanverse

Beatrice vs Beauty

American parents have registered 195,653 Beatrices since 1880, against 756 Beautys. Beatrice is still ahead, with 583 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Beatrice against Beauty, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Beatrice Beauty

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

Beatrice 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 Beatrice had 542 and Beauty had 28.

Side by side

  Beatrice Beauty
Total US births 195,653756
Most in one year 5,99428
Babies in 2025 58319
Estimated living today 48,000480
Median age today 6513
Peak year 19212018
Best rank 41st girls4,768th girls
Rank in 2025 508th6,116th
First recorded 18801902
Girls / boys 194,920 / 733756 / 0

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 Beautys are over 13. That is 52 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 Beatrice Beauty
France 131,670 Béatrice5
England and Wales 11,70710

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: Beatrice and Beauty.