Humanverse

Joab vs Joaquin

American parents have registered 35,654 Joaquins since 1880, against 1,000 Joabs. Joaquin is still ahead, with 925 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Joab against Joaquin, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Joab Joaquin

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

Joaquin has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1886 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Joab had 60 and Joaquin had 925.

Side by side

  Joab Joaquin
Total US births 1,00035,654
Most in one year 601,250
Babies in 2025 60925
Estimated living today 98033,000
Median age today 1416
Peak year 20252008
Best rank 2,304th boys275th boys
Rank in 2025 2,304th355th
First recorded 19651886
Girls / boys 0 / 1,00053 / 35,601

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 Joaquins alive today are over 16; half the Joabs are over 14. That is 2 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 Joab Joaquin
France 51,385
England and Wales 142258

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: Joab and Joaquin.