Humanverse

Sun vs Sunil

American parents have registered 1,007 Suns since 1880, against 989 Sunils. Sun is still ahead, with 18 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sun against Sunil, 1880 to 2025 0 13 25 38 50 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sun Sunil

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 91 years in which either name was published, Sun for 48 years and Sunil for 43 years. The lead changed hands 14 times.

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Sun Sunil
Total US births 1,007989
Most in one year 2842
Babies in 2025 18under 5
Estimated living today 870920
Median age today 3742
Peak year 20241979
Best rank 4,890th boys1,435th boys
Rank in 2025 6,446thunranked
First recorded 19021962
Girls / boys 503 / 5040 / 989

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 Sunils alive today are over 42; half the Suns are over 37. That is 5 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 Sun Sunil
France 16530

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: Sun and Sunil.