Willow vs Willy
American parents have registered 65,560 Willows since 1880, against 4,053 Willys. Willow is still ahead, with 4,786 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Willow Willy
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 125 years in which either name was published, Willy for 63 years and Willow for 62 years. The lead changed hands 25 times.
- 1904–1909 Willow ahead
- 1910–1914 Willy ahead
- 1923–1926 Willow ahead
- 1933–1970 Willy ahead
- 1974–1980 Willow ahead
- 1984–1990 Willy ahead
- 1994–2025 Willow ahead
19 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Willow | Willy | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 65,560 | 4,053 |
| Most in one year | 5,231 | 69 |
| Babies in 2025 | 4,786 | 27 |
| Estimated living today | 64,000 | 3,000 |
| Median age today | 6 | 35 |
| Peak year | 2021 | 1993 |
| Best rank | 39th girls | 1,400th boys |
| Rank in 2025 | 44th | 3,949th |
| First recorded | 1890 | 1884 |
| Girls / boys | 65,095 / 465 | 116 / 3,937 |
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 Willys alive today are over 35; half the Willows are over 6. That is 29 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Willow Alaska (3.3×), Idaho (2.1×), New Hampshire (2.1×)
- Willy California (4.4×), New York (3.5×), Florida (2.1×)
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.
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: Willow and Willy.