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Tobias vs Tobin

American parents have registered 29,322 Tobiases since 1880, against 5,737 Tobins. Tobias is still ahead, with 1,201 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Tobias Tobin

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 131 years in which either name was published, Tobias for 115 years and Tobin for 16 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Tobias Tobin
Total US births 29,3225,737
Most in one year 1,523163
Babies in 2025 1,20137
Estimated living today 28,0005,300
Median age today 1125
Peak year 20162013
Best rank 246th boys1,115th boys
Rank in 2025 283rd3,181st
First recorded 18801941
Girls / boys 0 / 29,322167 / 5,570

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 Tobins alive today are over 25; half the Tobiases are over 11. That is 14 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Tobias Tobin
England and Wales 13,563253
Northern Ireland 1563

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: Tobias and Tobin.