Humanverse

Sameul vs Sammie

American parents have registered 28,669 Sammies since 1880, against 871 Sameuls. Sammie is still ahead, with 48 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sameul against Sammie, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sameul Sammie

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

Sammie 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 1882, when Sameul had 5 and Sammie had 12.

Side by side

  Sameul Sammie
Total US births 87128,669
Most in one year 20636
Babies in 2025 under 548
Estimated living today 55013,000
Median age today 4965
Peak year 19501947
Best rank 1,657th boys311th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked5,608th
First recorded 18821880
Girls / boys 0 / 8717,833 / 20,836

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 Sammies alive today are over 65; half the Sameuls are over 49. That is 16 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 Sameul Sammie
England and Wales 7142

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: Sameul and Sammie.