Kristen vs Kristy

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Kristen Kristy

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 88 years in which either name was published, Kristen for 77 years and Kristy for 11 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

• 1938–1951 Kristen ahead
• 1952–1958 Kristy ahead
• 1959–1960 Kristen ahead
• 1961 Kristy ahead
• 1962–1976 Kristen ahead
• 1977–1979 Kristy ahead
• 1980–2025 Kristen 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 Kristys alive today are over 46; half the Kristens are over 40. That is 6 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Kristen Rhode Island (2.5×), New Hampshire (2.1×), Massachusetts (1.8×)
• Kristy Utah (2.0×), Wyoming (1.7×), Idaho (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

• Kristy vs Christy
• Kristen vs Kristin
• Kristen vs Kristina
• Kristen vs Kristine
• Kristen vs Kristi
• Kristen vs Krista
• Kristy vs Kristin
• Kristy vs Kristina