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Bernadette vs Bernardo

American parents have registered 55,033 Bernadettes since 1880, against 11,175 Bernardos. Bernadette is still ahead, with 241 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bernadette against Bernardo, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bernadette Bernardo

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 145 years in which either name was published, Bernadette for 124 years and Bernardo for 21 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Bernadette Bernardo
Total US births 55,03311,175
Most in one year 1,494240
Babies in 2025 241140
Estimated living today 38,0009,400
Median age today 6130
Peak year 19581995
Best rank 213th girls683rd boys
Rank in 2025 1,034th1,347th
First recorded 18801888
Girls / boys 54,973 / 600 / 11,175

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 Bernadettes alive today are over 61; half the Bernardos are over 30. That is 31 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 Bernadette Bernardo
France 141,455465
Ireland 5,64235
Italy 3661,441
England and Wales 497261
Poland 24

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: Bernadette and Bernardo.