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Primrose vs Priscila

American parents have registered 4,897 Priscilas since 1880, against 1,033 Primroses. Priscila is still ahead, with 84 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Primrose against Priscila, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Primrose Priscila

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 69 years in which either name was published, Priscila for 52 years and Primrose for 17 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Primrose Priscila
Total US births 1,0334,897
Most in one year 93257
Babies in 2025 6984
Estimated living today 9604,800
Median age today 520
Peak year 20212002
Best rank 2,057th girls880th girls
Rank in 2025 2,542nd2,194th
First recorded 19141964
Girls / boys 1,033 / 04,897 / 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 Priscilas alive today are over 20; half the Primroses are over 5. That is 15 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 Primrose Priscila
England and Wales 3,2267
France 5105

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: Primrose and Priscila.