Humanverse

Harlowe vs Harrison

American parents have registered 99,462 Harrisons since 1880, against 1,060 Harlowes. Harrison is still ahead, with 3,080 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Harlowe 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 2024, when Harlowe had 135 and Harrison had 2,977.

Side by side

  Harlowe Harrison
Total US births 1,06099,462
Most in one year 1353,670
Babies in 2025 1283,080
Estimated living today 1,00086,000
Median age today 513
Peak year 20242016
Best rank 1,676th girls107th boys
Rank in 2025 1,777th116th
First recorded 19161880
Girls / boys 994 / 66324 / 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 Harlowes are over 5. That is 8 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 Harlowe Harrison
England and Wales 13946,965
Scotland 32,660

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: Harlowe and Harrison.