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Paisley vs Paiton

American parents have registered 65,456 Paisleys since 1880, against 1,372 Paitons. Paisley is still ahead, with 3,513 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Paisley against Paiton, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Paisley Paiton

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

Paisley has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1966 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1998, when Paisley had 54 and Paiton had 46.

Side by side

  Paisley Paiton
Total US births 65,4561,372
Most in one year 5,091119
Babies in 2025 3,5138
Estimated living today 65,0001,400
Median age today 818
Peak year 20152008
Best rank 45th girls1,927th girls
Rank in 2025 67th10,917th
First recorded 19661992
Girls / boys 65,369 / 871,207 / 165

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 Paitons alive today are over 18; half the Paisleys are over 8. That is 10 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 Paisley Paiton
England and Wales 3,69565
Scotland 1474

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: Paisley and Paiton.