Humanverse

Blanche vs Blaze

American parents have registered 87,648 Blanches since 1880, against 9,110 Blazes. But in 2025 it was Blaze that was commoner, 353 babies to 16.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Blanche against Blaze, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Blanche Blaze

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, Blanche for 105 years and Blaze for 41 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Blanche Blaze
Total US births 87,6489,110
Most in one year 2,842373
Babies in 2025 16353
Estimated living today 8,4008,900
Median age today 7613
Peak year 19172015
Best rank 91st girls707th boys
Rank in 2025 6,838th781st
First recorded 18801921
Girls / boys 87,425 / 223602 / 8,508

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 Blanches alive today are over 76; half the Blazes are over 13. That is 63 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 Blanche Blaze
England and Wales 42306

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: Blanche and Blaze.