Hila vs Hilary

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Hila Hilary

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

Of the 137 years in which either name was published, Hilary for 122 years and Hila for 15 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.

• 1882–1883 Hilary ahead
• 1884 Hila ahead
• 1887 Hilary ahead
• 1890 Hila ahead
• 1891 Hilary ahead
• 1892–1896 Hila ahead
• 1897 Hilary ahead
• 1898–1901 Hila ahead
• 1902 Hilary ahead
• 1904–1909 Hila ahead
• 1910–2025 Hilary ahead

Side by side

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 Hilarys alive today are over 41; half the Hilas are over 16. That is 25 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.

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

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