Humanverse

Gradie vs Graham

American parents have registered 61,671 Grahams since 1880, against 648 Gradies. Graham is still ahead, with 2,980 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Gradie 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 1902, when Gradie had 8 and Graham had 8.

Side by side

  Gradie Graham
Total US births 64861,671
Most in one year 322,980
Babies in 2025 72,980
Estimated living today 10057,000
Median age today 7212
Peak year 19172025
Best rank 1,528th boys120th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked120th
First recorded 18981881
Girls / boys 222 / 426235 / 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 Gradies alive today are over 72; half the Grahams are over 12. That is 60 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Gradie Graham
France 5140

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: Gradie and Graham.