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Stanislaus vs Stanley

American parents have registered 302,862 Stanleys since 1880, against 787 Stanislauses. Stanley is still ahead, with 278 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Stanislaus against Stanley, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Stanislaus Stanley

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

Stanley 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 1884, when Stanislaus had 6 and Stanley had 105.

Side by side

  Stanislaus Stanley
Total US births 787302,862
Most in one year 466,472
Babies in 2025 under 5278
Estimated living today 140126,000
Median age today 5366
Peak year 19161954
Best rank 939th boys58th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked863rd
First recorded 18841880
Girls / boys 0 / 7871,437 / 301,425

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 Stanleys alive today are over 66; half the Stanislauses are over 53. 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 Stanislaus Stanley
France 53,060
Ireland 9129

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: Stanislaus and Stanley.