Tobe vs Tobey

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Tobe Tobey

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 140 years in which either name was published, Tobey for 85 years and Tobe for 55 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

• 1880–1935 Tobe ahead
• 1937–1938 Tobey ahead
• 1939 Tobe ahead
• 1940 Tobey ahead
• 1941 Tobe ahead
• 1942–1944 Tobey ahead
• 1945 Tobe ahead
• 1946–2025 Tobey ahead

Side by side

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 Tobes alive today are over 50; half the Tobeys are over 45. That is 5 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.

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

• Tobe vs Toby
• Tobe vs Tobias
• Tobe vs Tobin
• Tobe vs Tobi
• Tobe vs Tobie
• Tobey vs Toby
• Tobey vs Tobias
• Tobey vs Tobin