Humanverse

Bushra vs Buster

American parents have registered 8,178 Busters since 1880, against 1,033 Bushras. But in 2025 it was Bushra that was commoner, 44 babies to 12.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bushra against Buster, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bushra Buster

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, Buster for 114 years and Bushra for 32 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Bushra Buster
Total US births 1,0338,178
Most in one year 49251
Babies in 2025 4412
Estimated living today 1,0002,100
Median age today 1363
Peak year 20141918
Best rank 3,272nd girls379th boys
Rank in 2025 3,459th6,803rd
First recorded 19831880
Girls / boys 1,033 / 05 / 8,173

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 Busters alive today are over 63; half the Bushras are over 13. That is 50 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 Bushra Buster
England and Wales 915439
Scotland 163

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

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Bushra and Buster.