Humanverse

Criss vs Cristopher

American parents have registered 11,898 Cristophers since 1880, against 712 Crisses. Cristopher is still ahead, with 126 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Criss against Cristopher, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Criss Cristopher

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 85 years in which either name was published, Cristopher for 62 years and Criss for 23 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Criss Cristopher
Total US births 71211,898
Most in one year 40576
Babies in 2025 5126
Estimated living today 58012,000
Median age today 5221
Peak year 20072007
Best rank 2,920th boys470th boys
Rank in 2025 12,008th1,425th
First recorded 19181950
Girls / boys 114 / 5980 / 11,898

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 Crisses alive today are over 52; half the Cristophers are over 21. That is 31 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 Criss Cristopher
France 1585

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: Criss and Cristopher.