Humanverse

Pol vs Polo

American parents have registered 599 Polos since 1880, against 39 Pols. But in 2025 it was Pol that was commoner, 9 babies to 9.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Pol against Polo, 1880 to 2025 0 6 12 18 24 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Pol Polo

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

Polo has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1917 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Pol had 9 and Polo had 9.

Side by side

  Pol Polo
Total US births 39599
Most in one year 921
Babies in 2025 99
Estimated living today 40500
Median age today 822
Peak year 20252001
Best rank 8,243rd boys3,842nd boys
Rank in 2025 8,243rd8,243rd
First recorded 20081917
Girls / boys 0 / 390 / 599

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 Polos alive today are over 22; half the Pols are over 8. That is 14 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 Pol Polo
France 3,18535

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: Pol and Polo.