Humanverse

Esther vs Eston

American parents have registered 272,206 Esthers since 1880, against 2,006 Estons. Esther is still ahead, with 2,277 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Esther Eston

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

Esther 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 2004, when Esther had 1,114 and Eston had 24.

Side by side

  Esther Eston
Total US births 272,2062,006
Most in one year 6,58840
Babies in 2025 2,27712
Estimated living today 103,0001,000
Median age today 3927
Peak year 19181915
Best rank 38th girls996th boys
Rank in 2025 119th6,803rd
First recorded 18801886
Girls / boys 271,234 / 9720 / 2,006

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 Esthers alive today are over 39; half the Estons are over 27. That is 12 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 Esther Eston
England and Wales 9,1046

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: Esther and Eston.