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Gracey vs Graham

American parents have registered 61,671 Grahams since 1880, against 2,614 Graceys. Graham is still ahead, with 2,980 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Gracey 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 2005, when Gracey had 183 and Graham had 670.

Side by side

  Gracey Graham
Total US births 2,61461,671
Most in one year 1832,980
Babies in 2025 262,980
Estimated living today 2,60057,000
Median age today 1812
Peak year 20052025
Best rank 1,239th girls120th boys
Rank in 2025 4,987th120th
First recorded 19181881
Girls / boys 2,614 / 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 Graceys alive today are over 18; half the Grahams are over 12. That is 6 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 Gracey Graham
Scotland 95,530
England and Wales 325625

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: Gracey and Graham.