Humanverse

Tomas vs Tommy

American parents have registered 181,675 Tommys since 1880, against 30,730 Tomases. Tommy is still ahead, with 455 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Tomas against Tommy, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Tomas Tommy

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 146 years in which either name was published, Tommy for 127 years and Tomas for 19 years. The lead changed hands 13 times.

8 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Tomas Tommy
Total US births 30,730181,675
Most in one year 5374,649
Babies in 2025 394455
Estimated living today 25,000115,000
Median age today 2961
Peak year 20031947
Best rank 468th boys79th boys
Rank in 2025 691st657th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 27 / 30,7032,942 / 178,733

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 Tommys alive today are over 61; half the Tomases are over 29. That is 32 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 Tomas Tommy
England and Wales 4,33526,463
Norway 3,2229,791
France 2,1456,695
Ireland 3,1352,484
Italy 1,841517
Scotland 1951,596
Northern Ireland 513917
Belgium 663730
Switzerland 877 Tomás83
Poland 18253

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: Tomas and Tommy.