Humanverse

Colbey vs Collin

American parents have registered 81,962 Collins since 1880, against 551 Colbeys. Collin is still ahead, with 619 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Colbey Collin

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

Collin has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1895 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1984, when Colbey had 9 and Collin had 534.

Side by side

  Colbey Collin
Total US births 55181,962
Most in one year 393,369
Babies in 2025 under 5619
Estimated living today 54079,000
Median age today 2623
Peak year 20021996
Best rank 2,504th boys115th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked493rd
First recorded 19831895
Girls / boys 28 / 523525 / 81,437

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 Colbeys alive today are over 26; half the Collins are over 23. That is 3 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 Colbey Collin
England and Wales 2964

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: Colbey and Collin.