Wilhelmine vs Willow

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Wilhelmine Willow

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, Willow for 110 years and Wilhelmine for 36 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

• 1880–1907 Wilhelmine ahead
• 1908–1909 Willow ahead
• 1910–1914 Wilhelmine ahead
• 1915–1916 Willow ahead
• 1917–1919 Wilhelmine ahead
• 1920–2025 Willow ahead

Side by side

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 Willows alive today are over 6; half the Wilhelmines are over 2. That is 4 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

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

• Wilhelmine vs William
• Wilhelmine vs Willie
• Wilhelmine vs Wilma
• Wilhelmine vs Willard
• Wilhelmine vs Wilbur
• Willow vs William
• Willow vs Willie
• Willow vs Wilma