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Paiton vs Payton

American parents have registered 84,784 Paytons since 1880, against 1,372 Paitons. Payton is still ahead, with 810 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Paiton against Payton, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Paiton Payton

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

Payton 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 1992, when Paiton had 14 and Payton had 569.

Side by side

  Paiton Payton
Total US births 1,37284,784
Most in one year 1194,852
Babies in 2025 8810
Estimated living today 1,40083,000
Median age today 1817
Peak year 20082009
Best rank 1,927th girls84th girls
Rank in 2025 10,917th440th
First recorded 19921880
Girls / boys 1,207 / 16560,045 / 24,739

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.

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 Paiton Payton
England and Wales 651,061
Scotland 4310

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: Paiton and Payton.