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Jonah vs Jonpaul

American parents have registered 86,075 Jonahs since 1880, against 1,571 Jonpauls. Jonah is still ahead, with 2,867 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jonah against Jonpaul, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jonah Jonpaul

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

Jonah 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 1968, when Jonah had 39 and Jonpaul had 20.

Side by side

  Jonah Jonpaul
Total US births 86,0751,571
Most in one year 2,99867
Babies in 2025 2,867under 5
Estimated living today 84,0001,500
Median age today 1438
Peak year 20081979
Best rank 136th boys1,089th boys
Rank in 2025 128thunranked
First recorded 18801964
Girls / boys 792 / 85,2830 / 1,571

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 Jonpauls alive today are over 38; half the Jonahs are over 14. That is 24 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 Jonah Jonpaul
England and Wales 7,63013

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: Jonah and Jonpaul.