Talan vs Tally

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Talan Tally

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 78 years in which either name was published, Tally for 44 years and Talan for 34 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

• 1926–1984 Tally ahead
• 1985–1988 Talan ahead
• 1990 Tally ahead
• 1991–1996 Talan ahead
• 1997 Tally ahead
• 1998 Talan ahead
• 1999–2000 Tally ahead
• 2001–2025 Talan ahead

Side by side

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 Tallys alive today are over 45; half the Talans are over 18. That is 27 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

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

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