Humanverse

Jeremy vs Jerry

American parents have registered 632,416 Jerrys since 1880, against 448,737 Jeremys. But in 2025 it was Jeremy that was commoner, 1,152 babies to 262.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Jeremy Jerry

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, Jerry for 91 years and Jeremy for 55 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Jeremy Jerry
Total US births 448,737632,416
Most in one year 21,74919,263
Babies in 2025 1,152262
Estimated living today 422,000367,000
Median age today 4066
Peak year 19771947
Best rank 15th boys20th boys
Rank in 2025 292nd906th
First recorded 19231880
Girls / boys 2,312 / 446,42517,314 / 615,102

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 Jerrys alive today are over 66; half the Jeremys are over 40. That is 26 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 Jeremy Jerry
France 134,5951,590
England and Wales 2,225552
Belgium 2,706 Jérémy34
Ireland 498269
Scotland 1759
Northern Ireland 83

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: Jeremy and Jerry.