Humanverse

Gabe vs Gabriel

American parents have registered 402,627 Gabriels since 1880, against 4,110 Gabes. Gabriel is still ahead, with 6,579 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Gabe against Gabriel, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Gabe Gabriel

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

Gabriel 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 1891, when Gabe had 8 and Gabriel had 10.

Side by side

  Gabe Gabriel
Total US births 4,110402,627
Most in one year 12613,188
Babies in 2025 226,579
Estimated living today 3,400385,000
Median age today 2119
Peak year 20052008
Best rank 1,253rd boys24th boys
Rank in 2025 4,539th37th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 0 / 4,1106,849 / 395,778

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 Gabes alive today are over 21; half the Gabriels are over 19. That is 2 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 Gabe Gabriel
England and Wales 13321,297

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: Gabe and Gabriel.