Humanverse

Jude vs Judith

American parents have registered 455,955 Judiths since 1880, against 57,006 Judes. But in 2025 it was Jude that was commoner, 2,477 babies to 344.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jude against Judith, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jude Judith

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, Judith for 122 years and Jude for 24 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Jude Judith
Total US births 57,006455,955
Most in one year 2,80625,303
Babies in 2025 2,477344
Estimated living today 55,000293,000
Median age today 1075
Peak year 20151943
Best rank 156th boys7th girls
Rank in 2025 155th788th
First recorded 19121880
Girls / boys 3,024 / 53,982454,714 / 1,241

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 Judiths alive today are over 75; half the Judes are over 10. That is 65 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 Jude Judith
England and Wales 26,759479
France 2,56513,875
Scotland 2,513809
Ireland 1,260822
Northern Ireland 1,85049
Belgium 264900
Switzerland 51203

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: Jude and Judith.