Humanverse

Gradie vs Grayson

American parents have registered 133,184 Graysons since 1880, against 648 Gradies. Grayson is still ahead, with 5,857 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Gradie 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

Of the 123 years in which either name was published, Grayson for 109 years and Gradie for 14 years. The lead changed hands 11 times.

Side by side

  Gradie Grayson
Total US births 648133,184
Most in one year 328,850
Babies in 2025 75,857
Estimated living today 100131,000
Median age today 728
Peak year 19172017
Best rank 1,528th boys34th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked51st
First recorded 18981905
Girls / boys 222 / 4264,190 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Gradies alive today are over 72; half the Graysons are over 8. That is 64 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 Grayson
France 560

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 Grayson.