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Harlow vs Harrison

American parents have registered 99,462 Harrisons since 1880, against 16,655 Harlows. Harrison is still ahead, with 3,080 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Harlow against Harrison, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Harlow Harrison

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

Harrison 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 2023, when Harlow had 1,455 and Harrison had 3,075.

Side by side

  Harlow Harrison
Total US births 16,65599,462
Most in one year 1,4553,670
Babies in 2025 1,1483,080
Estimated living today 15,00086,000
Median age today 613
Peak year 20212016
Best rank 237th girls107th boys
Rank in 2025 309th116th
First recorded 18821880
Girls / boys 13,986 / 2,669324 / 99,138

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 Harrisons alive today are over 13; half the Harlows are over 6. That is 7 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Harlow Harrison
England and Wales 3,56846,965
New Zealand 2553,416
Scotland 4412,660
Ireland 155769
Northern Ireland 70565
France 20445

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: Harlow and Harrison.