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Bernadette vs Bertram

American parents have registered 55,033 Bernadettes since 1880, against 7,955 Bertrams. Bernadette is still ahead, with 241 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Bernadette Bertram

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, Bernadette for 139 years and Bertram for 7 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Bernadette Bertram
Total US births 55,0337,955
Most in one year 1,494228
Babies in 2025 2419
Estimated living today 38,0002,400
Median age today 6161
Peak year 19581923
Best rank 213th girls394th boys
Rank in 2025 1,034th8,243rd
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 54,973 / 600 / 7,955

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.

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 Bertram
France 141,4555
England and Wales 497384

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 Bertram.