Humanverse

Windy vs Winona

American parents have registered 12,953 Winonas since 1880, against 4,983 Windys. Winona is still ahead, with 466 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Windy against Winona, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Windy Winona

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, Winona for 120 years and Windy for 26 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Windy Winona
Total US births 4,98312,953
Most in one year 310466
Babies in 2025 6466
Estimated living today 4,6006,100
Median age today 5045
Peak year 19752025
Best rank 551st girls627th girls
Rank in 2025 13,208th627th
First recorded 19481880
Girls / boys 4,971 / 1212,953 / 0

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 Windys alive today are over 50; half the Winonas are over 45. That is 5 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 Windy Winona
France 410295

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: Windy and Winona.