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Gila vs Gilbert

American parents have registered 130,821 Gilberts since 1880, against 640 Gilas. Gilbert is still ahead, with 145 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Gila against Gilbert, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Gila Gilbert

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

Gilbert 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 2018, when Gila had 14 and Gilbert had 166.

Side by side

  Gila Gilbert
Total US births 640130,821
Most in one year 162,138
Babies in 2025 9145
Estimated living today 60062,000
Median age today 3059
Peak year 19731930
Best rank 3,787th girls90th boys
Rank in 2025 10,107th1,328th
First recorded 19201880
Girls / boys 640 / 0673 / 130,148

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 Gilberts alive today are over 59; half the Gilas are over 30. That is 29 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 Gila Gilbert
England and Wales 46582

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: Gila and Gilbert.