Humanverse

Sidnee vs Sidney

American parents have registered 108,987 Sidneys since 1880, against 636 Sidnees. Sidney is still ahead, with 251 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sidnee against Sidney, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sidnee Sidney

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

Sidney 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 2005, when Sidnee had 37 and Sidney had 1,056.

Side by side

  Sidnee Sidney
Total US births 636108,987
Most in one year 391,939
Babies in 2025 under 5251
Estimated living today 62055,000
Median age today 2435
Peak year 19991918
Best rank 3,245th girls94th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,323rd
First recorded 19401880
Girls / boys 636 / 024,785 / 84,202

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 Sidneys alive today are over 35; half the Sidnees are over 24. That is 11 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 Sidnee Sidney
England and Wales 35,484

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: Sidnee and Sidney.