Horst vs Hortense

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Horst Hortense

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 95 years in which either name was published, Hortense for 92 years and Horst for 3 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

• 1880–1964 Hortense ahead
• 1965 Horst ahead
• 1966 Hortense ahead
• 1967–1968 Horst ahead
• 1969–1976 Hortense 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 Hortenses alive today are over 78; half the Horsts are over 60. That is 18 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

Related comparisons

• Horst vs Horace
• Horst vs Horacio
• Horst vs Hortencia
• Horst vs Hortensia
• Horst vs Horatio
• Hortense vs Horace
• Hortense vs Horacio
• Hortense vs Hortencia