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Tristen vs Tristian

American parents have registered 25,554 Tristens since 1880, against 8,601 Tristians. Tristen is still ahead, with 121 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Tristen Tristian

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

Tristen has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1968 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Tristen had 121 and Tristian had 115.

Side by side

  Tristen Tristian
Total US births 25,5548,601
Most in one year 1,478373
Babies in 2025 121115
Estimated living today 25,0008,500
Median age today 2117
Peak year 19962010
Best rank 249th boys665th boys
Rank in 2025 1,509th1,514th
First recorded 19681977
Girls / boys 4,182 / 21,372641 / 7,960

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 Tristens alive today are over 21; half the Tristians are over 17. 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 Tristen Tristian
England and Wales 31495
Ireland 147

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: Tristen and Tristian.