Humanverse

Peace vs Pearline

American parents have registered 6,262 Pearlines since 1880, against 1,109 Peaces. But in 2025 it was Peace that was commoner, 66 babies to fewer than five.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Peace against Pearline, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Peace Pearline

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 129 years in which either name was published, Pearline for 96 years and Peace for 33 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

Side by side

  Peace Pearline
Total US births 1,1096,262
Most in one year 94187
Babies in 2025 66under 5
Estimated living today 1,1002,000
Median age today 675
Peak year 20231927
Best rank 2,936th girls514th girls
Rank in 2025 4,067thunranked
First recorded 19181889
Girls / boys 758 / 3516,262 / 0

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 Pearlines alive today are over 75; half the Peaces are over 6. That is 69 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 Peace Pearline
France 4015

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: Peace and Pearline.