Humanverse

Jeremia vs Jeremiah

American parents have registered 226,373 Jeremiahs since 1880, against 723 Jeremias. Jeremiah is still ahead, with 3,849 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jeremia against Jeremiah, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jeremia Jeremiah

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

Jeremiah 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 Jeremia had 12 and Jeremiah had 1,305.

Side by side

  Jeremia Jeremiah
Total US births 723226,373
Most in one year 277,756
Babies in 2025 73,849
Estimated living today 700215,000
Median age today 2618
Peak year 19782010
Best rank 2,068th boys51st boys
Rank in 2025 9,714th88th
First recorded 19731880
Girls / boys 10 / 713699 / 225,674

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 Jeremias alive today are over 26; half the Jeremiahs are over 18. That is 8 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 Jeremia Jeremiah
Switzerland 12961

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: Jeremia and Jeremiah.