Humanverse

Faith vs Fayth

American parents have registered 148,142 Faiths since 1880, against 2,055 Fayths. Faith is still ahead, with 1,220 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Faith against Fayth, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Faith Fayth

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

Faith 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 2009, when Faith had 3,778 and Fayth had 93.

Side by side

  Faith Fayth
Total US births 148,1422,055
Most in one year 5,612113
Babies in 2025 1,2209
Estimated living today 136,0002,000
Median age today 2219
Peak year 20032004
Best rank 50th girls1,714th girls
Rank in 2025 254th10,107th
First recorded 18801952
Girls / boys 147,851 / 2912,055 / 0

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 Faiths alive today are over 22; half the Fayths are over 19. That is 3 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 Faith Fayth
England and Wales 14,496149
Scotland 1,0483
Ireland 6394

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: Faith and Fayth.