Humanverse

Jud vs Judah

American parents have registered 36,431 Judahs since 1880, against 633 Juds. Judah is still ahead, with 2,091 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jud against Judah, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jud Judah

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 110 years in which either name was published, Judah for 73 years and Jud for 37 years. The lead changed hands 18 times.

11 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Jud Judah
Total US births 63336,431
Most in one year 172,178
Babies in 2025 62,091
Estimated living today 41036,000
Median age today 578
Peak year 19612021
Best rank 1,997th boys182nd boys
Rank in 2025 10,695th178th
First recorded 19151912
Girls / boys 0 / 633853 / 35,578

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 Juds alive today are over 57; half the Judahs are over 8. That is 49 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 Jud Judah
England and Wales 61,225

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: Jud and Judah.