Humanverse

Sophie vs Sophy

American parents have registered 138,694 Sophies since 1880, against 508 Sophys. Sophie is still ahead, with 3,984 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Sophie Sophy

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 1976, when Sophie had 60 and Sophy had 7.

Side by side

  Sophie Sophy
Total US births 138,694508
Most in one year 4,74124
Babies in 2025 3,9846
Estimated living today 99,000440
Median age today 1417
Peak year 20112002
Best rank 51st girls4,906th girls
Rank in 2025 55th13,208th
First recorded 18801912
Girls / boys 138,577 / 117508 / 0

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 Sophys alive today are over 17; half the Sophies are over 14. That is 3 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 Sophie Sophy
France 247,475110
England and Wales 104,514156
Scotland 15,3209
Poland 1,8192

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: Sophie and Sophy.