Humanverse

Tommie vs Tommy

American parents have registered 181,675 Tommys since 1880, against 52,215 Tommies. Tommy is still ahead, with 455 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Tommie 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 100 years and Tommie for 46 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Tommie Tommy
Total US births 52,215181,675
Most in one year 9894,649
Babies in 2025 111455
Estimated living today 23,000115,000
Median age today 6561
Peak year 19471947
Best rank 257th boys79th boys
Rank in 2025 3,450th657th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 17,769 / 34,4462,942 / 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 Tommies alive today are over 65; half the Tommys are over 61. That is 4 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 Tommie Tommy
England and Wales 92526,463
Ireland 1542,484
Scotland 141,596
Belgium 6730

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: Tommie and Tommy.