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Precilla vs Preston

American parents have registered 123,757 Prestons since 1880, against 671 Precillas. Preston is still ahead, with 1,141 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Precilla against Preston, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Precilla Preston

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

Preston 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 1957, when Precilla had 29 and Preston had 516.

Side by side

  Precilla Preston
Total US births 671123,757
Most in one year 293,814
Babies in 2025 under 51,141
Estimated living today 520104,000
Median age today 4421
Peak year 19572007
Best rank 2,028th girls114th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked299th
First recorded 19111880
Girls / boys 671 / 0799 / 122,958

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 Precillas alive today are over 44; half the Prestons are over 21. That is 23 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 Precilla Preston
France 601,005

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: Precilla and Preston.