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Sanjay vs Santiago

American parents have registered 103,965 Santiagos since 1880, against 2,606 Sanjays. Santiago is still ahead, with 7,560 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Sanjay 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 1974, when Sanjay had 58 and Santiago had 213.

Side by side

  Sanjay Santiago
Total US births 2,606103,965
Most in one year 907,560
Babies in 2025 207,560
Estimated living today 2,50099,000
Median age today 238
Peak year 20062025
Best rank 1,605th boys26th boys
Rank in 2025 4,857th26th
First recorded 19621880
Girls / boys 0 / 2,606137 / 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 Sanjays alive today are over 23; half the Santiagos are over 8. That is 15 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 Sanjay Santiago
France 3702,310
England and Wales 3251,991
Scotland 458

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: Sanjay and Santiago.