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Cornelis vs Cornelius

American parents have registered 37,049 Corneliuses since 1880, against 25 Cornelises. Cornelius is still ahead, with 82 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cornelis against Cornelius, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cornelis Cornelius

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

Cornelius has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2002, when Cornelis had 5 and Cornelius had 192.

Side by side

  Cornelis Cornelius
Total US births 2537,049
Most in one year 5498
Babies in 2025 under 582
Estimated living today 2020,000
Median age today 6345
Peak year 19461974
Best rank 3,525th boys346th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,906th
First recorded 19461880
Girls / boys 0 / 25642 / 36,407

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 Cornelises alive today are over 63; half the Corneliuses are over 45. That is 18 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 Cornelis Cornelius
France 3535

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: Cornelis and Cornelius.