Humanverse

Philicia vs Philip

American parents have registered 345,173 Philips since 1880, against 502 Philicias. Philip is still ahead, with 568 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Philicia against Philip, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Philicia Philip

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

Philip 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 1991, when Philicia had 34 and Philip had 2,759.

Side by side

  Philicia Philip
Total US births 502345,173
Most in one year 346,288
Babies in 2025 under 5568
Estimated living today 480208,000
Median age today 3656
Peak year 19911953
Best rank 3,207th girls61st boys
Rank in 2025 unranked527th
First recorded 19601880
Girls / boys 502 / 01,137 / 344,036

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 Philips alive today are over 56; half the Philicias are over 36. That is 20 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.

Country Philicia Philip
France 151,535

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: Philicia and Philip.