Humanverse

Sanav vs Sandy

American parents have registered 79,530 Sandys since 1880, against 185 Sanavs. Sandy is still ahead, with 67 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Sanav Sandy

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

Sandy 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 2020, when Sanav had 28 and Sandy had 75.

Side by side

  Sanav Sandy
Total US births 18579,530
Most in one year 283,822
Babies in 2025 767
Estimated living today 18065,000
Median age today 660
Peak year 20201960
Best rank 3,734th boys126th girls
Rank in 2025 9,714th2,998th
First recorded 20141880
Girls / boys 0 / 18569,072 / 10,458

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 Sandys alive today are over 60; half the Sanavs are over 6. That is 54 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 Sanav Sandy
Scotland 3491
England and Wales 18301

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: Sanav and Sandy.