Gil vs Gillie

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Gil Gillie

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

Of the 134 years in which either name was published, Gil for 98 years and Gillie for 36 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

• 1881–1923 Gillie ahead
• 1924 Gil ahead
• 1925–1926 Gillie ahead
• 1927–1929 Gil ahead
• 1930 Gillie ahead
• 1931 Gil ahead
• 1932 Gillie ahead
• 1933–2025 Gil ahead

Side by side

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 Gillies alive today are over 75; half the Gils are over 47. That is 28 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

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

• Gil vs Gilbert
• Gil vs Gilberto
• Gil vs Gillian
• Gil vs Gilda
• Gil vs Giles
• Gil vs Gill
• Gillie vs Gilbert
• Gillie vs Gilberto