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Kristen vs Kristin

American parents have registered 220,952 Kristens since 1880, against 180,951 Kristins. Kristen is still ahead, with 106 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kristen Kristin

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 94 years in which either name was published, Kristen for 51 years and Kristin for 43 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Kristen Kristin
Total US births 220,952180,951
Most in one year 9,5969,801
Babies in 2025 10629
Estimated living today 212,000171,000
Median age today 4043
Peak year 19821981
Best rank 33rd girls31st girls
Rank in 2025 1,990th4,661st
First recorded 19381932
Girls / boys 218,767 / 2,185179,313 / 1,638

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 Kristins alive today are over 43; half the Kristens are over 40. That is 3 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 Kristen Kristin
Norway 60417,638
England and Wales 605204
Scotland 164153
Ireland 5921
Northern Ireland 2515

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: Kristen and Kristin.