Humanverse

Sunday vs Sunny

American parents have registered 17,697 Sunnys since 1880, against 3,317 Sundays. Sunny is still ahead, with 998 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sunday against Sunny, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sunday Sunny

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 116 years in which either name was published, Sunny for 109 years and Sunday for 7 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Sunday Sunny
Total US births 3,31717,697
Most in one year 2901,057
Babies in 2025 290998
Estimated living today 3,10016,000
Median age today 1918
Peak year 20252024
Best rank 946th girls370th girls
Rank in 2025 946th389th
First recorded 19161900
Girls / boys 3,197 / 12013,191 / 4,506

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 Sunday Sunny
England and Wales 2651,469
Scotland 2498

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: Sunday and Sunny.