Humanverse

Stefany vs Stephanie

American parents have registered 747,786 Stephanies since 1880, against 4,330 Stefanys. Stephanie is still ahead, with 543 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Stefany against Stephanie, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Stefany Stephanie

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

Stephanie has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1891 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Stefany had 55 and Stephanie had 543.

Side by side

  Stefany Stephanie
Total US births 4,330747,786
Most in one year 15024,966
Babies in 2025 55543
Estimated living today 4,200700,000
Median age today 2541
Peak year 20021990
Best rank 1,303rd girls7th girls
Rank in 2025 2,998th557th
First recorded 19491891
Girls / boys 4,330 / 0745,148 / 2,638

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 Stephanies alive today are over 41; half the Stefanys are over 25. That is 16 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 Stefany Stephanie
France 155238,945 Stéphanie
England and Wales 249,360
Italy 252400

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: Stefany and Stephanie.