Humanverse

Heath vs Heavenleigh

American parents have registered 29,704 Heaths since 1880, against 508 Heavenleighs. Heath is still ahead, with 253 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Heath against Heavenleigh, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Heath Heavenleigh

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

Heath has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1913 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2014, when Heath had 231 and Heavenleigh had 25.

Side by side

  Heath Heavenleigh
Total US births 29,704508
Most in one year 1,26425
Babies in 2025 2539
Estimated living today 28,000500
Median age today 4316
Peak year 19742014
Best rank 181st boys5,310th girls
Rank in 2025 929th10,107th
First recorded 19131990
Girls / boys 181 / 29,523508 / 0

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 Heaths alive today are over 43; half the Heavenleighs are over 16. That is 27 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 Heath Heavenleigh
England and Wales 1,5983

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: Heath and Heavenleigh.