Humanverse

Thatcher vs Thayer

American parents have registered 4,967 Thatchers since 1880, against 1,437 Thayers. Thatcher is still ahead, with 194 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Thatcher against Thayer, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Thatcher 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

Of the 106 years in which either name was published, Thayer for 62 years and Thatcher for 44 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

Side by side

  Thatcher Thayer
Total US births 4,9671,437
Most in one year 29752
Babies in 2025 19415
Estimated living today 4,9001,100
Median age today 918
Peak year 20212014
Best rank 815th boys2,429th boys
Rank in 2025 1,108th5,861st
First recorded 19651912
Girls / boys 12 / 4,95579 / 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 Thayers alive today are over 18; half the Thatchers are over 9. That is 9 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 Thatcher Thayer
England and Wales 183

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: Thatcher and Thayer.