Olie vs Oliva

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Olie Oliva

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 140 years in which either name was published, Oliva for 91 years and Olie for 49 years. The lead changed hands 33 times.

• 1880–1902 Olie ahead, apart from 2 short spells
• 1903–1905 Oliva ahead
• 1906–1917 Olie ahead, apart from one short spell
• 1923–1925 Oliva ahead
• 1926–1932 Olie ahead
• 1933–1940 Oliva ahead, apart from one short spell
• 1943–1945 Olie ahead
• 1952–2025 Oliva ahead, apart from 2 short spells

20 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

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 Olies alive today are over 76; half the Olivas are over 26. That is 50 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

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

• Olie vs Olivia
• Olie vs Oliver
• Olie vs Olive
• Olie vs Olin
• Olie vs Olivier
• Oliva vs Olivia
• Oliva vs Oliver
• Oliva vs Olive