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Gracelyn vs Graham

American parents have registered 61,671 Grahams since 1880, against 15,917 Gracelyns. Graham is still ahead, with 2,980 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Gracelyn against Graham, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Gracelyn Graham

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

Graham has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1881 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2006, when Gracelyn had 364 and Graham had 649.

Side by side

  Gracelyn Graham
Total US births 15,91761,671
Most in one year 9802,980
Babies in 2025 6592,980
Estimated living today 16,00057,000
Median age today 912
Peak year 20182025
Best rank 333rd girls120th boys
Rank in 2025 466th120th
First recorded 19241881
Girls / boys 15,917 / 0235 / 61,436

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 Grahams alive today are over 12; half the Gracelyns are over 9. That is 3 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 Gracelyn Graham
Scotland 45,530
Ireland 34,094
England and Wales 92625

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: Gracelyn and Graham.