Humanverse

Cole vs Collyn

American parents have registered 154,646 Coles since 1880, against 1,088 Collyns. Cole is still ahead, with 2,009 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cole against Collyn, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cole Collyn

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

Cole has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1886 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1975, when Cole had 158 and Collyn had 8.

Side by side

  Cole Collyn
Total US births 154,6461,088
Most in one year 6,05452
Babies in 2025 2,0099
Estimated living today 151,0001,100
Median age today 2019
Peak year 20022009
Best rank 69th boys2,451st boys
Rank in 2025 182nd8,243rd
First recorded 18861975
Girls / boys 553 / 154,093261 / 827

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.

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 Collyn
France 10015

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 Collyn.