Humanverse

Sandy vs Santos

American parents have registered 79,530 Sandys since 1880, against 21,573 Santoses. But in 2025 it was Santos that was commoner, 337 babies to 67.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Sandy Santos

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 146 years in which either name was published, Sandy for 96 years and Santos for 50 years. The lead changed hands 13 times.

8 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Sandy Santos
Total US births 79,53021,573
Most in one year 3,822337
Babies in 2025 67337
Estimated living today 65,00016,000
Median age today 6031
Peak year 19602025
Best rank 126th girls763rd boys
Rank in 2025 2,998th763rd
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 69,072 / 10,4582,759 / 18,814

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 Santoses are over 31. That is 29 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 Sandy Santos
France 18,205135
England and Wales 30141
Poland 410

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: Sandy and Santos.