Humanverse

Haigen vs Hailey

American parents have registered 181,710 Haileys since 1880, against 50 Haigens. Hailey is still ahead, with 2,561 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Haigen Hailey

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

Hailey has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1922 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2016, when Haigen had 13 and Hailey had 3,947.

Side by side

  Haigen Hailey
Total US births 50181,710
Most in one year 138,808
Babies in 2025 under 52,561
Estimated living today 50180,000
Median age today 919
Peak year 20142003
Best rank 6,307th boys26th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked104th
First recorded 20141922
Girls / boys 6 / 44181,434 / 276

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 Haileys alive today are over 19; half the Haigens are over 9. That is 10 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 Haigen Hailey
England and Wales 31,116

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: Haigen and Hailey.