Humanverse

Benedetta vs Benjamin

American parents have registered 829,312 Benjamins since 1880, against 421 Benedettas. Benjamin is still ahead, with 9,770 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Benedetta against Benjamin, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Benedetta Benjamin

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

Benjamin 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 1906, when Benedetta had 7 and Benjamin had 352.

Side by side

  Benedetta Benjamin
Total US births 421829,312
Most in one year 1815,788
Babies in 2025 79,770
Estimated living today 170719,000
Median age today 5327
Peak year 19211989
Best rank 2,120th girls29th boys
Rank in 2025 11,932nd11th
First recorded 19061880
Girls / boys 421 / 02,482 / 826,830

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 Benedettas alive today are over 53; half the Benjamins are over 27. That is 26 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 Benedetta Benjamin
France 50152,645
England and Wales 1291,220
Italy 32,4371,063
Switzerland 564,490

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: Benedetta and Benjamin.