Humanverse

Harriet vs Harrold

American parents have registered 90,427 Harriets since 1880, against 1,103 Harrolds. Harriet is still ahead, with 226 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Harriet Harrold

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 1988, when Harriet had 31 and Harrold had 5.

Side by side

  Harriet Harrold
Total US births 90,4271,103
Most in one year 2,39546
Babies in 2025 226under 5
Estimated living today 24,000230
Median age today 7475
Peak year 19211923
Best rank 114th girls1,041st boys
Rank in 2025 1,071stunranked
First recorded 18801898
Girls / boys 90,306 / 1210 / 1,103

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 Harrold
France 805

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 Harrold.