Humanverse

Manav vs Manuel

American parents have registered 192,742 Manuels since 1880, against 744 Manavs. Manuel is still ahead, with 860 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Manav 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 2000, when Manav had 65 and Manuel had 2,436.

Side by side

  Manav Manuel
Total US births 744192,742
Most in one year 652,665
Babies in 2025 5860
Estimated living today 730134,000
Median age today 1836
Peak year 20002005
Best rank 1,725th boys153rd boys
Rank in 2025 12,008th371st
First recorded 19931880
Girls / boys 0 / 7441,158 / 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 Manavs are over 18. That is 18 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 Manav Manuel
England and Wales 347533

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: Manav and Manuel.