Humanverse

Dream vs Drew

American parents have registered 88,085 Drews since 1880, against 8,327 Dreams. Drew is still ahead, with 940 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dream against Drew, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dream Drew

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 137 years in which either name was published, Drew for 133 years and Dream for 4 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Dream Drew
Total US births 8,32788,085
Most in one year 1,0322,460
Babies in 2025 780940
Estimated living today 8,30082,000
Median age today 428
Peak year 20221985
Best rank 335th girls126th boys
Rank in 2025 432nd553rd
First recorded 19701880
Girls / boys 7,771 / 5569,493 / 78,592

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 Drews alive today are over 28; half the Dreams are over 4. That is 24 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 Dream Drew
England and Wales 1044,299
Ireland 3146

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: Dream and Drew.