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Bernice vs Beryl

American parents have registered 185,533 Bernices since 1880, against 12,468 Beryls. Bernice is still ahead, with 35 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bernice against Beryl, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bernice Beryl

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

Bernice 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 2012, when Bernice had 47 and Beryl had 12.

Side by side

  Bernice Beryl
Total US births 185,53312,468
Most in one year 6,309379
Babies in 2025 358
Estimated living today 39,0003,300
Median age today 7473
Peak year 19211920
Best rank 39th girls374th girls
Rank in 2025 4,067th10,917th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 182,130 / 3,40310,130 / 2,338

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 Bernice Beryl
France 1201,260
England and Wales 340110
Ireland 2609

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: Bernice and Beryl.