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Edison vs Edith

American parents have registered 271,705 Ediths since 1880, against 12,738 Edisons. Edith is still ahead, with 595 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Edison Edith

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

Edith 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 2013, when Edison had 376 and Edith had 387.

Side by side

  Edison Edith
Total US births 12,738271,705
Most in one year 5547,877
Babies in 2025 276595
Estimated living today 10,00066,000
Median age today 1266
Peak year 20181918
Best rank 538th boys30th girls
Rank in 2025 867th499th
First recorded 18911880
Girls / boys 216 / 12,522270,880 / 825

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 Ediths alive today are over 66; half the Edisons are over 12. That is 54 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 Edison Edith
France 17557,285
England and Wales 1,5918,177
Scotland 3406
Ireland 3374
Switzerland 17671

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: Edison and Edith.