Humanverse

Sander vs Santiago

American parents have registered 103,965 Santiagos since 1880, against 1,667 Sanders. Santiago is still ahead, with 7,560 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sander against Santiago, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sander Santiago

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

Santiago 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 1937, when Sander had 17 and Santiago had 82.

Side by side

  Sander Santiago
Total US births 1,667103,965
Most in one year 467,560
Babies in 2025 417,560
Estimated living today 1,30099,000
Median age today 218
Peak year 20202025
Best rank 2,689th boys26th boys
Rank in 2025 2,991st26th
First recorded 19121880
Girls / boys 79 / 1,588137 / 103,828

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 Sanders alive today are over 21; half the Santiagos are over 8. That is 13 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 Sander Santiago
Belgium 3,620370
France 852,310
England and Wales 441,991
Poland 9245

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: Sander and Santiago.