Humanverse

Jac vs Jacqueline

American parents have registered 427,479 Jacquelines since 1880, against 615 Jacs. Jacqueline is still ahead, with 541 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jac against Jacqueline, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jac Jacqueline

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

Jacqueline has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1891 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2023, when Jac had 17 and Jacqueline had 564.

Side by side

  Jac Jacqueline
Total US births 615427,479
Most in one year 1812,023
Babies in 2025 15541
Estimated living today 480338,000
Median age today 2353
Peak year 19561964
Best rank 1,886th boys37th girls
Rank in 2025 5,861st558th
First recorded 19151891
Girls / boys 0 / 615426,088 / 1,391

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 Jacquelines alive today are over 53; half the Jacs are over 23. That is 30 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 Jac Jacqueline
France 5372,425
Scotland 514,767
England and Wales 2,888882
Northern Ireland 741

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: Jac and Jacqueline.