Humanverse

Herman vs Hermon

American parents have registered 136,772 Hermans since 1880, against 4,059 Hermons. Herman is still ahead, with 58 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Herman against Hermon, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Herman Hermon

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

Herman 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 2024, when Herman had 50 and Hermon had 15.

Side by side

  Herman Hermon
Total US births 136,7724,059
Most in one year 3,239114
Babies in 2025 5813
Estimated living today 38,000980
Median age today 6772
Peak year 19211920
Best rank 64th boys583rd boys
Rank in 2025 2,363rdunranked
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 795 / 135,97793 / 3,966

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 Hermons alive today are over 72; half the Hermans are over 67. That is 5 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 Herman Hermon
England and Wales 2120

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: Herman and Hermon.