Humanverse

Grier vs Griffin

American parents have registered 51,809 Griffins since 1880, against 756 Griers. Griffin is still ahead, with 1,648 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Grier against Griffin, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Grier Griffin

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

Griffin 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 1925, when Grier had 12 and Griffin had 23.

Side by side

  Grier Griffin
Total US births 75651,809
Most in one year 431,750
Babies in 2025 261,648
Estimated living today 64050,000
Median age today 1215
Peak year 20072023
Best rank 4,475th girls214th boys
Rank in 2025 5,917th222nd
First recorded 19161881
Girls / boys 424 / 332758 / 51,051

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 Griffins alive today are over 15; half the Griers are over 12. That is 3 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 Grier Griffin
Scotland 317

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: Grier and Griffin.