Humanverse

Kristen vs Kristine

American parents have registered 220,952 Kristens since 1880, against 84,514 Kristines. Kristen is still ahead, with 106 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kristen Kristine

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 108 years in which either name was published, Kristen for 57 years and Kristine for 51 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Kristen Kristine
Total US births 220,95284,514
Most in one year 9,5963,541
Babies in 2025 10649
Estimated living today 212,00076,000
Median age today 4054
Peak year 19821970
Best rank 33rd girls109th girls
Rank in 2025 1,990th3,211th
First recorded 19381916
Girls / boys 218,767 / 2,18584,329 / 185

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 Kristines alive today are over 54; half the Kristens are over 40. That is 14 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 Kristine
Norway 60411,140
France 91570
England and Wales 605109
Scotland 16470
Ireland 5947

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 Kristine.