Humanverse

Hilarie vs Hillary

American parents have registered 30,305 Hillarys since 1880, against 771 Hilaries. Hillary is still ahead, with 67 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Hilarie against Hillary, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Hilarie Hillary

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

Hillary has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1888 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1953, when Hilarie had 21 and Hillary had 78.

Side by side

  Hilarie Hillary
Total US births 77130,305
Most in one year 322,527
Babies in 2025 under 567
Estimated living today 71029,000
Median age today 4837
Peak year 19811992
Best rank 2,774th girls132nd girls
Rank in 2025 unranked2,583rd
First recorded 19481888
Girls / boys 771 / 029,043 / 1,262

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 Hilaries alive today are over 48; half the Hillarys are over 37. That is 11 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 Hillary
France 20365

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 Hillary.