Humanverse

Blakely vs Blane

American parents have registered 22,036 Blakelys since 1880, against 4,459 Blanes. Blakely is still ahead, with 1,646 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Blakely against Blane, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Blakely Blane

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 103 years in which either name was published, Blane for 71 years and Blakely for 32 years. The lead changed hands 15 times.

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Blakely Blane
Total US births 22,0364,459
Most in one year 1,905114
Babies in 2025 1,64627
Estimated living today 22,0003,900
Median age today 633
Peak year 20241957
Best rank 158th girls708th boys
Rank in 2025 191st3,949th
First recorded 19201914
Girls / boys 20,802 / 1,23411 / 4,448

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 Blanes alive today are over 33; half the Blakelys are over 6. That is 27 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 Blakely Blane
England and Wales 302117
Scotland 1840

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: Blakely and Blane.