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Clement vs Cleo

American parents have registered 45,092 Cleos since 1880, against 14,173 Clements. Cleo is still ahead, with 534 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Clement against Cleo, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Clement Cleo

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, Cleo for 143 years and Clement for 3 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Clement Cleo
Total US births 14,17345,092
Most in one year 3441,399
Babies in 2025 62534
Estimated living today 4,90012,000
Median age today 5648
Peak year 19181920
Best rank 297th boys191st girls
Rank in 2025 2,258th577th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 6 / 14,16733,565 / 11,527

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 Clements alive today are over 56; half the Cleos are over 48. That is 8 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 Clement Cleo
France 180,580 Clément7,640 Cléo
Belgium 4,431 Clément1,237
England and Wales 5104,845
Switzerland 733 Clément483
Ireland 157223
Scotland 3255
Poland 2 Clément5

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: Clement and Cleo.