Tobe vs Tobias

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Tobe Tobias

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 145 years in which either name was published, Tobias for 111 years and Tobe for 34 years. The lead changed hands 11 times.

• 1880–1900 Tobe ahead
• 1901 Tobias ahead
• 1902–1903 Tobe ahead
• 1904–1906 Tobias ahead
• 1907–1913 Tobe ahead
• 1914–1918 Tobias ahead
• 1919 Tobe ahead
• 1920–1922 Tobias ahead
• 1923 Tobe ahead
• 1924–1928 Tobias ahead
• 1929–1930 Tobe ahead
• 1931–2025 Tobias 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 Tobiases are over 11. That is 39 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 Tobin
• Tobe vs Tobi
• Tobe vs Tobey
• Tobe vs Tobie
• Tobias vs Toby
• Tobias vs Tobin
• Tobias vs Tobi