Cole vs Collin
American parents have registered 154,646 Coles since 1880, against 81,962 Collins. Cole is still ahead, with 2,009 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Cole 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
Of the 123 years in which either name was published, Cole for 77 years and Collin for 46 years. The lead changed hands 28 times.
- 1907–1919 Cole ahead
- 1929–1950 Collin ahead, apart from 2 short spells
- 1951–1962 Cole ahead
- 1963–1981 Collin ahead, apart from one short spell
- 1982–2025 Cole ahead, apart from one short spell
20 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Cole | Collin | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 154,646 | 81,962 |
| Most in one year | 6,054 | 3,369 |
| Babies in 2025 | 2,009 | 619 |
| Estimated living today | 151,000 | 79,000 |
| Median age today | 20 | 23 |
| Peak year | 2002 | 1996 |
| Best rank | 69th boys | 115th boys |
| Rank in 2025 | 182nd | 493rd |
| First recorded | 1886 | 1895 |
| Girls / boys | 553 / 154,093 | 525 / 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 Collins alive today are over 23; half the Coles are over 20. That is 3 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 | Cole | Collin |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 9,051 | 64 |
| Ireland | 526 | 3 |
| France | 100 | 150 |
| Switzerland | 18 | 127 |
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: Cole and Collin.