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Glen vs Glenn

American parents have registered 250,778 Glenns since 1880, against 127,054 Glens. Glenn is still ahead, with 124 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Glen against Glenn, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Glen Glenn

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

Glenn 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 1884, when Glen had 52 and Glenn had 67.

Side by side

  Glen Glenn
Total US births 127,054250,778
Most in one year 2,9477,389
Babies in 2025 74124
Estimated living today 65,000135,000
Median age today 6364
Peak year 19571962
Best rank 129th boys55th boys
Rank in 2025 2,020th1,443rd
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 1,348 / 125,7062,136 / 248,642

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.

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 Glen Glenn
New Zealand 2,7093,983
Norway 1544,000
Ireland 1,6361,548
France 5101,825
Belgium 2801,477
Scotland 932515
England and Wales 626521
Switzerland 135175
Northern Ireland 78132

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: Glen and Glenn.