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Cliodhna vs Clive

American parents have registered 3,336 Clives since 1880, against 7 Cliodhnas. Clive is still ahead, with 57 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cliodhna against Clive, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cliodhna Clive

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

Clive has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1885 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Cliodhna had 7 and Clive had 57.

Side by side

  Cliodhna Clive
Total US births 73,336
Most in one year 785
Babies in 2025 757
Estimated living today 72,200
Median age today 016
Peak year 20252016
Best rank 11,932nd girls1,788th boys
Rank in 2025 11,932nd2,390th
First recorded 20251885
Girls / boys 7 / 00 / 3,336

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 Clives alive today are over 16; half the Cliodhnas have not had a first birthday. That is 16 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 Cliodhna Clive
Ireland 1,057804
England and Wales 65225

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: Cliodhna and Clive.