Pat vs Patrica

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Pat Patrica

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 132 years in which either name was published, Pat for 98 years and Patrica for 34 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.

• 1880–1971 Pat ahead
• 1972–1985 Patrica ahead
• 1986 Pat ahead
• 1987–1990 Patrica ahead
• 1991 Pat ahead
• 1992–2002 Patrica ahead
• 2003 Pat ahead
• 2004 Patrica ahead
• 2005 Pat ahead
• 2006–2009 Patrica ahead
• 2013–2014 Pat ahead

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 Pats alive today are over 75; half the Patricas are over 64. That is 11 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Pat Oklahoma (2.6×), New Mexico (2.6×), Montana (2.5×)
• Patrica Mississippi (2.4×), Arkansas (1.9×), Tennessee (1.8×)

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.

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

• Pat vs Patricia
• Pat vs Patrick
• Pat vs Patsy
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• Pat vs Patrice
• Patrica vs Patricia
• Patrica vs Patrick