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Stephane vs Steven

American parents have registered 1,297,590 Stevens since 1880, against 1,830 Stephanes. Steven is still ahead, with 1,261 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Stephane against Steven, 1880 to 2025 0 10k 20k 30k 40k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Stephane Steven

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

Steven 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 1915, when Stephane had 7 and Steven had 298.

Side by side

  Stephane Steven
Total US births 1,8301,297,590
Most in one year 7038,491
Babies in 2025 under 51,261
Estimated living today 1,7001.1 million
Median age today 3855
Peak year 19851956
Best rank 2,440th girls10th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked271st
First recorded 19151880
Girls / boys 1,128 / 7024,466 / 1,293,124

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 Stevens alive today are over 55; half the Stephanes are over 38. That is 17 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 Stephane Steven
France 310,060 Stéphane33,485
England and Wales 447,001
Belgium 344 Stéphane1,187
Switzerland 143 Stéphane358

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: Stephane and Steven.