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Stacey vs Stan

American parents have registered 161,732 Staceys since 1880, against 8,480 Stans. Stacey is still ahead, with 59 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Stacey against Stan, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Stacey Stan

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 113 years in which either name was published, Stacey for 80 years and Stan for 33 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Stacey Stan
Total US births 161,7328,480
Most in one year 8,006419
Babies in 2025 597
Estimated living today 150,0005,600
Median age today 5164
Peak year 19711959
Best rank 41st girls386th boys
Rank in 2025 3,067th9,714th
First recorded 19131914
Girls / boys 147,750 / 13,9820 / 8,480

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 Stans alive today are over 64; half the Staceys are over 51. That is 13 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 Stacey Stan
Scotland 4,83810
Belgium 1434,128
France 3653,615
England and Wales 2,684411
Ireland 1,53610

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: Stacey and Stan.