Kirby vs Kirstin

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Kirby Kirstin

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 143 years in which either name was published, Kirby for 118 years and Kirstin for 25 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

• 1881–1976 Kirby ahead
• 1977–1982 Kirstin ahead
• 1983–1988 Kirby ahead
• 1989–1992 Kirstin ahead
• 1993 Kirby ahead
• 1994–2008 Kirstin ahead
• 2009–2025 Kirby ahead

Side by side

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 Kirbys alive today are over 42; half the Kirstins are over 35. That is 7 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Kirby Louisiana (4.1×), Texas (2.4×), North Carolina (2.2×)
• Kirstin Minnesota (2.6×), Washington (2.0×), Wisconsin (1.7×)

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.

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

• Kirby vs Kirk
• Kirby vs Kirsten
• Kirby vs Kira
• Kirby vs Kiran
• Kirby vs Kirstie
• Kirstin vs Kirk
• Kirstin vs Kirsten
• Kirstin vs Kira