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Abbie vs Abby

American parents have registered 62,036 Abbys since 1880, against 22,556 Abbies. Abby is still ahead, with 379 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Abbie against Abby, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Abbie Abby

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, Abby for 78 years and Abbie for 68 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Abbie Abby
Total US births 22,55662,036
Most in one year 5372,048
Babies in 2025 125379
Estimated living today 16,00060,000
Median age today 2726
Peak year 20032003
Best rank 525th girls164th girls
Rank in 2025 1,652nd731st
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 22,226 / 33061,855 / 181

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.

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 Abbie Abby
England and Wales 15,9784,790
Scotland 4,3071,701
Ireland 3,3641,165
France 4253,200
Northern Ireland 1,201268
Belgium 5199
Poland 47

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: Abbie and Abby.