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Timothee vs Timothy

American parents have registered 1,088,520 Timothys since 1880, against 374 Timothees. Timothy is still ahead, with 1,734 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Timothee against Timothy, 1880 to 2025 0 8k 16k 24k 32k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Timothee Timothy

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

Timothy 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 2024, when Timothee had 32 and Timothy had 1,721.

Side by side

  Timothee Timothy
Total US births 3741,088,520
Most in one year 3230,862
Babies in 2025 291,734
Estimated living today 370910,000
Median age today 1351
Peak year 20241959
Best rank 3,524th boys12th boys
Rank in 2025 3,757th203rd
First recorded 19751880
Girls / boys 0 / 3744,328 / 1,084,192

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 Timothys alive today are over 51; half the Timothees are over 13. That is 38 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 Timothee Timothy
France 25,240 Timothée2,560
England and Wales 1046,296
Belgium 666 Timothée1,009
Switzerland 428 Timothée414
Poland 10 Timothée189

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: Timothee and Timothy.