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Ward vs Warren

American parents have registered 185,502 Warrens since 1880, against 15,124 Wards. Warren is still ahead, with 1,493 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ward against Warren, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ward Warren

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

Warren has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1896, when Ward had 41 and Warren had 125.

Side by side

  Ward Warren
Total US births 15,124185,502
Most in one year 3417,826
Babies in 2025 581,493
Estimated living today 6,20087,000
Median age today 6357
Peak year 19611921
Best rank 430th boys24th boys
Rank in 2025 2,833rd240th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 98 / 15,026984 / 184,518

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 Wards alive today are over 63; half the Warrens are over 57. That is 6 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 Ward Warren
France 56,920
England and Wales 252,813
Belgium 2,27446
Switzerland 452

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: Ward and Warren.