Humanverse

Manal vs Manuel

American parents have registered 192,742 Manuels since 1880, against 1,440 Manals. Manuel is still ahead, with 860 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Manal against Manuel, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Manal Manuel

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

Manuel has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2021, when Manal had 55 and Manuel had 1,036.

Side by side

  Manal Manuel
Total US births 1,440192,742
Most in one year 552,665
Babies in 2025 39860
Estimated living today 1,400134,000
Median age today 1936
Peak year 20212005
Best rank 3,002nd girls153rd boys
Rank in 2025 3,780th371st
First recorded 19671880
Girls / boys 1,440 / 01,158 / 191,584

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 Manuels alive today are over 36; half the Manals are over 19. That is 17 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 Manal Manuel
Italy 90342,880
France 1,92036,725
Switzerland 173,249
Belgium 653623
England and Wales 569533
Ireland 843
Scotland 612

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: Manal and Manuel.