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Hughie vs Hugo

American parents have registered 37,518 Hugos since 1880, against 1,676 Hughies. Hugo is still ahead, with 837 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Hughie against Hugo, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Hughie Hugo

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

Hugo 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 1941, when Hughie had 32 and Hugo had 48.

Side by side

  Hughie Hugo
Total US births 1,67637,518
Most in one year 48837
Babies in 2025 7837
Estimated living today 46031,000
Median age today 7021
Peak year 19252025
Best rank 984th boys377th boys
Rank in 2025 9,714th377th
First recorded 18881880
Girls / boys 0 / 1,67636 / 37,482

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 Hughies alive today are over 70; half the Hugos are over 21. That is 49 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 Hughie Hugo
England and Wales 1,25419,873
Ireland 1331,687
Scotland 55731
Northern Ireland 10300

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: Hughie and Hugo.