Humanverse

Bernice vs Beryle

American parents have registered 185,533 Bernices since 1880, against 644 Beryles. Bernice is still ahead, with 35 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Bernice Beryle

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 1905, when Bernice had 1,052 and Beryle had 9.

Side by side

  Bernice Beryle
Total US births 185,533644
Most in one year 6,30937
Babies in 2025 35under 5
Estimated living today 39,000100
Median age today 7481
Peak year 19211921
Best rank 39th girls1,437th girls
Rank in 2025 4,067thunranked
First recorded 18801903
Girls / boys 182,130 / 3,403550 / 94

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 Beryles alive today are over 81; half the Bernices are over 74. That is 7 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 Bernice Beryle
France 12025

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 Beryle.