Humanverse

Stephan vs Stephanie

American parents have registered 747,786 Stephanies since 1880, against 27,910 Stephans. Stephanie is still ahead, with 543 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Stephan 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 1895, when Stephan had 5 and Stephanie had 8.

Side by side

  Stephan Stephanie
Total US births 27,910747,786
Most in one year 57924,966
Babies in 2025 86543
Estimated living today 23,000700,000
Median age today 4241
Peak year 19891990
Best rank 382nd boys7th girls
Rank in 2025 1,837th557th
First recorded 18951891
Girls / boys 229 / 27,681745,148 / 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.

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 Stephan Stephanie
France 13,855238,945 Stéphanie
England and Wales 4109,360
Scotland 668,597
Austria 2,5344,216
Ireland 974,342
Belgium 731,800
Norway 473480
Italy 257400

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: Stephan and Stephanie.