Humanverse

Heather vs Heavenleigh

American parents have registered 527,387 Heathers since 1880, against 508 Heavenleighs. Heather is still ahead, with 177 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Heather against Heavenleigh, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Heather 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

Heather has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1914 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2019, when Heather had 162 and Heavenleigh had 21.

Side by side

  Heather Heavenleigh
Total US births 527,387508
Most in one year 24,36625
Babies in 2025 1779
Estimated living today 502,000500
Median age today 4416
Peak year 19752014
Best rank 3rd girls5,310th girls
Rank in 2025 1,261st10,107th
First recorded 19141990
Girls / boys 525,910 / 1,477508 / 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 Heathers alive today are over 44; half the Heavenleighs are over 16. That is 28 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 Heather Heavenleigh
England and Wales 5,5433

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: Heather and Heavenleigh.