Humanverse

Samie vs Samuel

American parents have registered 823,085 Samuels since 1880, against 813 Samies. Samuel is still ahead, with 8,342 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Samie against Samuel, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Samie Samuel

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

Samuel 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 1907, when Samie had 9 and Samuel had 892.

Side by side

  Samie Samuel
Total US births 813823,085
Most in one year 3314,845
Babies in 2025 58,342
Estimated living today 250627,000
Median age today 4927
Peak year 19212001
Best rank 1,296th boys26th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked18th
First recorded 19021880
Girls / boys 182 / 6312,889 / 820,196

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 Samies alive today are over 49; half the Samuels are over 27. That is 22 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 Samie Samuel
England and Wales 28109,273
France 597,380

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: Samie and Samuel.