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Hilarie vs Hilda

American parents have registered 81,200 Hildas since 1880, against 771 Hilaries. Hilda is still ahead, with 55 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Hilarie Hilda

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

Hilda 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 1992, when Hilarie had 29 and Hilda had 158.

Side by side

  Hilarie Hilda
Total US births 77181,200
Most in one year 322,137
Babies in 2025 under 555
Estimated living today 71022,000
Median age today 4867
Peak year 19811921
Best rank 2,774th girls123rd girls
Rank in 2025 unranked2,998th
First recorded 19481880
Girls / boys 771 / 081,022 / 178

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 Hildas alive today are over 67; half the Hilaries are over 48. That is 19 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 Hilarie Hilda
France 201,355

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: Hilarie and Hilda.