Selah vs Selby

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Selah Selby

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 109 years in which either name was published, Selby for 62 years and Selah for 47 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

• 1909–1973 Selby ahead
• 1974–1976 Selah ahead
• 1977 Selby ahead
• 1978–1986 Selah ahead
• 1987 Selby ahead
• 1988–1989 Selah ahead
• 1990 Selby ahead
• 1991–1992 Selah ahead
• 1993 Selby ahead
• 1994–2025 Selah ahead

Side by side

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 Selbys alive today are over 32; half the Selahs are over 8. That is 24 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.

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

• Selah vs Selena
• Selah vs Selma
• Selah vs Selina
• Selah vs Selene
• Selah vs Selvin
• Selah vs Selwyn
• Selby vs Selena
• Selby vs Selma