Humanverse

Winfred vs Winifred

American parents have registered 46,200 Winifreds since 1880, against 10,455 Winfreds. Winifred is still ahead, with 284 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Winfred against Winifred, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Winfred Winifred

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, Winifred for 131 years and Winfred for 15 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Winfred Winifred
Total US births 10,45546,200
Most in one year 2601,640
Babies in 2025 under 5284
Estimated living today 3,60011,000
Median age today 6668
Peak year 19221918
Best rank 387th boys144th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked922nd
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 351 / 10,10445,094 / 1,106

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 Winifreds alive today are over 68; half the Winfreds are over 66. That is 2 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 Winfred Winifred
England and Wales 31,231

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: Winfred and Winifred.