Humanverse

Jeremiah vs Jeremy

American parents have registered 448,737 Jeremys since 1880, against 226,373 Jeremiahs. But in 2025 it was Jeremiah that was commoner, 3,849 babies to 1,152.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jeremiah against Jeremy, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jeremiah Jeremy

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 146 years in which either name was published, Jeremiah for 104 years and Jeremy for 42 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Jeremiah Jeremy
Total US births 226,373448,737
Most in one year 7,75621,749
Babies in 2025 3,8491,152
Estimated living today 215,000422,000
Median age today 1840
Peak year 20101977
Best rank 51st boys15th boys
Rank in 2025 88th292nd
First recorded 18801923
Girls / boys 699 / 225,6742,312 / 446,425

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 Jeremys alive today are over 40; half the Jeremiahs are over 18. That is 22 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 Jeremiah Jeremy
France 290134,595
England and Wales 3,0062,225
Ireland 2,689498
Belgium 542,706 Jérémy
Switzerland 611,418
Scotland 40175
Poland 7134
Northern Ireland 78

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: Jeremiah and Jeremy.