Humanverse

Gracelyn vs Grayson

American parents have registered 133,184 Graysons since 1880, against 15,917 Gracelyns. Grayson is still ahead, with 5,857 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Gracelyn against Grayson, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Gracelyn Grayson

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

Grayson has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1905 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1947, when Gracelyn had 10 and Grayson had 24.

Side by side

  Gracelyn Grayson
Total US births 15,917133,184
Most in one year 9808,850
Babies in 2025 6595,857
Estimated living today 16,000131,000
Median age today 98
Peak year 20182017
Best rank 333rd girls34th boys
Rank in 2025 466th51st
First recorded 19241905
Girls / boys 15,917 / 04,190 / 128,994

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 Gracelyn Grayson
England and Wales 928,135
Scotland 4811
Ireland 3224

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 Grayson.