Humanverse

Harriet vs Harriett

American parents have registered 90,427 Harriets since 1880, against 21,626 Harrietts. Harriet is still ahead, with 226 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Harriet Harriett

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 1991, when Harriet had 30 and Harriett had 19.

Side by side

  Harriet Harriett
Total US births 90,42721,626
Most in one year 2,395585
Babies in 2025 22617
Estimated living today 24,0005,800
Median age today 7474
Peak year 19211920
Best rank 114th girls270th girls
Rank in 2025 1,071st6,546th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 90,306 / 12121,621 / 5

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.

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 Harriet Harriett
England and Wales 25,5381,372
Scotland 7738
Ireland 3826
Northern Ireland 2077

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: Harriet and Harriett.