Humanverse

Harmoney vs Harriet

American parents have registered 90,427 Harriets since 1880, against 607 Harmoneys. Harriet is still ahead, with 226 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Harmoney 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 2008, when Harmoney had 30 and Harriet had 36.

Side by side

  Harmoney Harriet
Total US births 60790,427
Most in one year 442,395
Babies in 2025 9226
Estimated living today 60024,000
Median age today 1374
Peak year 20091921
Best rank 3,619th girls114th girls
Rank in 2025 10,107th1,071st
First recorded 19811880
Girls / boys 607 / 090,306 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Harriets alive today are over 74; half the Harmoneys are over 13. That is 61 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 Harmoney 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: Harmoney and Harriet.