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Thaddaeus vs Thalia

American parents have registered 16,264 Thalias since 1880, against 1,045 Thaddaeuses. Thalia is still ahead, with 446 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Thaddaeus against Thalia, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Thaddaeus Thalia

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

Thalia has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1885 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1985, when Thaddaeus had 24 and Thalia had 27.

Side by side

  Thaddaeus Thalia
Total US births 1,04516,264
Most in one year 29700
Babies in 2025 10446
Estimated living today 1,00015,000
Median age today 2521
Peak year 20051993
Best rank 3,389th boys363rd girls
Rank in 2025 7,679th647th
First recorded 19241885
Girls / boys 0 / 1,04516,264 / 0

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 Thaddaeuses alive today are over 25; half the Thalias are over 21. That is 4 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.

Country Thaddaeus Thalia
England and Wales 31,679

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: Thaddaeus and Thalia.