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Claire vs Claudia

American parents have registered 214,123 Claires since 1880, against 129,078 Claudias. Claire is still ahead, with 3,487 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Claire against Claudia, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Claire Claudia

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, Claire for 88 years and Claudia for 58 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

Side by side

  Claire Claudia
Total US births 214,123129,078
Most in one year 5,2163,383
Babies in 2025 3,487219
Estimated living today 169,000100,000
Median age today 1949
Peak year 20161952
Best rank 40th girls111th girls
Rank in 2025 68th1,096th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 211,919 / 2,204128,318 / 760

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 Claudias alive today are over 49; half the Claires are over 19. That is 30 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 Claire Claudia
France 160,38020,685
Scotland 16,976494
Ireland 11,171870
England and Wales 3,1425,464
New Zealand 3,174804
Belgium 1,684736
Poland 311,033
Switzerland 493471
Northern Ireland 545169

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: Claire and Claudia.