Humanverse

Sopheak vs Sophie

American parents have registered 138,694 Sophies since 1880, against 38 Sopheaks. Sophie is still ahead, with 3,984 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sopheak against Sophie, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sopheak Sophie

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

Sophie 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 1985, when Sopheak had 13 and Sophie had 206.

Side by side

  Sopheak Sophie
Total US births 38138,694
Most in one year 134,741
Babies in 2025 under 53,984
Estimated living today 4099,000
Median age today 3914
Peak year 19852011
Best rank 3,401st boys51st girls
Rank in 2025 unranked55th
First recorded 19851880
Girls / boys 0 / 38138,577 / 117

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 Sopheaks alive today are over 39; half the Sophies are over 14. That is 25 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 Sopheak Sophie
France 5247,475

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: Sopheak and Sophie.