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Thaddeus vs Thayer

American parents have registered 26,089 Thaddeuses since 1880, against 1,437 Thayers. Thaddeus is still ahead, with 314 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Thaddeus against Thayer, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Thaddeus Thayer

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

Thaddeus 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 2014, when Thaddeus had 328 and Thayer had 52.

Side by side

  Thaddeus Thayer
Total US births 26,0891,437
Most in one year 41652
Babies in 2025 31415
Estimated living today 18,0001,100
Median age today 3518
Peak year 20162014
Best rank 638th boys2,429th boys
Rank in 2025 797th5,861st
First recorded 18801912
Girls / boys 32 / 26,05779 / 1,358

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 Thaddeuses alive today are over 35; half the Thayers are over 18. That is 17 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 Thaddeus Thayer
England and Wales 1853

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: Thaddeus and Thayer.