Humanverse

Collin vs Colyn

American parents have registered 81,962 Collins since 1880, against 711 Colyns. Collin is still ahead, with 619 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Collin Colyn

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 1945, when Collin had 36 and Colyn had 5.

Side by side

  Collin Colyn
Total US births 81,962711
Most in one year 3,36944
Babies in 2025 619under 5
Estimated living today 79,000690
Median age today 2323
Peak year 19962001
Best rank 115th boys2,277th boys
Rank in 2025 493rdunranked
First recorded 18951945
Girls / boys 525 / 81,43710 / 701

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.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Collin Colyn
France 150175
Switzerland 12712

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: Collin and Colyn.