Humanverse

Harpreet vs Harriet

American parents have registered 90,427 Harriets since 1880, against 503 Harpreets. Harriet is still ahead, with 226 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Harpreet 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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Harriet for 145 years and Harpreet for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Harpreet Harriet
Total US births 50390,427
Most in one year 322,395
Babies in 2025 under 5226
Estimated living today 49024,000
Median age today 3174
Peak year 19941921
Best rank 5,249th girls114th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked1,071st
First recorded 19791880
Girls / boys 254 / 24990,306 / 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 Harpreets are over 31. That is 43 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 Harpreet Harriet
England and Wales 44925,538

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: Harpreet and Harriet.