Humanverse

Kristen vs Kriston

American parents have registered 220,952 Kristens since 1880, against 1,266 Kristons. Kristen is still ahead, with 106 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Kristen Kriston

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

Kristen has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1938 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Kristen had 106 and Kriston had 6.

Side by side

  Kristen Kriston
Total US births 220,9521,266
Most in one year 9,59657
Babies in 2025 1066
Estimated living today 212,0001,200
Median age today 4039
Peak year 19821980
Best rank 33rd girls2,440th girls
Rank in 2025 1,990thunranked
First recorded 19381961
Girls / boys 218,767 / 2,185720 / 546

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.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Kristen Kriston
England and Wales 6057

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 Kriston.