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Jules vs Julian

American parents have registered 268,291 Julians since 1880, against 11,467 Juleses. Julian is still ahead, with 7,626 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jules against Julian, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jules Julian

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

Julian 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 1880, when Jules had 16 and Julian had 32.

Side by side

  Jules Julian
Total US births 11,467268,291
Most in one year 2218,477
Babies in 2025 2197,626
Estimated living today 6,900241,000
Median age today 2215
Peak year 19282017
Best rank 489th boys37th boys
Rank in 2025 1,393rd25th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 2,084 / 9,3833,306 / 264,985

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 Juleses alive today are over 22; half the Julians are over 15. That is 7 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 Jules Julian
France 176,03019,200
Poland 234,321
Belgium 9,9172,322
Switzerland 1,5275,521
England and Wales 7263,901
Ireland 42806
Scotland 13367

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: Jules and Julian.