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Candela vs Candice

American parents have registered 68,139 Candices since 1880, against 77 Candelas. Candice is still ahead, with 25 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Candela against Candice, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Candela Candice

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

Candice has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1925 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2023, when Candela had 6 and Candice had 22.

Side by side

  Candela Candice
Total US births 7768,139
Most in one year 133,810
Babies in 2025 under 525
Estimated living today 8064,000
Median age today 1942
Peak year 20051982
Best rank 8,330th girls78th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked5,099th
First recorded 20021925
Girls / boys 77 / 067,984 / 155

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 Candices alive today are over 42; half the Candelas are over 19. That is 23 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 Candela Candice
France 6523,955
England and Wales 17754

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: Candela and Candice.