Humanverse

Ivan vs Yvan

American parents have registered 150,787 Ivans since 1880, against 510 Yvans. Ivan is still ahead, with 2,240 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ivan against Yvan, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ivan Yvan

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

Ivan 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 1974, when Ivan had 668 and Yvan had 9.

Side by side

  Ivan Yvan
Total US births 150,787510
Most in one year 3,47917
Babies in 2025 2,24012
Estimated living today 123,000490
Median age today 2122
Peak year 20042020
Best rank 117th boys5,235th boys
Rank in 2025 162nd6,803rd
First recorded 18801961
Girls / boys 650 / 150,1375 / 505

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.

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 Ivan Yvan
France 10,03027,420
England and Wales 3,30512
Belgium 547112

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: Ivan and Yvan.