Humanverse

Hardie vs Harriet

American parents have registered 90,427 Harriets since 1880, against 644 Hardies. Harriet is still ahead, with 226 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Hardie against Harriet, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Hardie Harriet

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

Harriet has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1979, when Hardie had 5 and Harriet had 47.

Side by side

  Hardie Harriet
Total US births 64490,427
Most in one year 312,395
Babies in 2025 under 5226
Estimated living today 13024,000
Median age today 7474
Peak year 19211921
Best rank 1,329th boys114th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked1,071st
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 0 / 64490,306 / 121

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.

Both names abroad

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

Country Hardie Harriet
England and Wales 325,538

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: Hardie and Harriet.