Humanverse

Timmy vs Timothey

American parents have registered 25,923 Timmys since 1880, against 591 Timotheys. Timmy is still ahead, with 15 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Timmy against Timothey, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Timmy Timothey

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

Timmy has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1926 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2008, when Timmy had 44 and Timothey had 7.

Side by side

  Timmy Timothey
Total US births 25,923591
Most in one year 1,58431
Babies in 2025 15under 5
Estimated living today 21,000490
Median age today 5959
Peak year 19601959
Best rank 192nd boys1,416th boys
Rank in 2025 5,861stunranked
First recorded 19261949
Girls / boys 168 / 25,7550 / 591

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.

Both names abroad

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

Country Timmy Timothey
France 810400
England and Wales 1443

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: Timmy and Timothey.