Humanverse

Gene vs Genia

American parents have registered 133,874 Genes since 1880, against 1,673 Genias. Gene is still ahead, with 63 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Gene against Genia, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Gene Genia

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

Gene 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 1886, when Gene had 13 and Genia had 5.

Side by side

  Gene Genia
Total US births 133,8741,673
Most in one year 3,31157
Babies in 2025 63under 5
Estimated living today 56,0001,300
Median age today 6855
Peak year 19371964
Best rank 61st boys1,497th girls
Rank in 2025 2,230thunranked
First recorded 18801886
Girls / boys 6,997 / 126,8771,673 / 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 Genes alive today are over 68; half the Genias are over 55. That is 13 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 Gene Genia
France 25145

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: Gene and Genia.