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Abbigayle vs Abby

American parents have registered 62,036 Abbys since 1880, against 1,324 Abbigayles. Abby is still ahead, with 379 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Abbigayle 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

Abby has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2010, when Abbigayle had 62 and Abby had 1,149.

Side by side

  Abbigayle Abby
Total US births 1,32462,036
Most in one year 872,048
Babies in 2025 under 5379
Estimated living today 1,30060,000
Median age today 2126
Peak year 20012003
Best rank 1,968th girls164th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked731st
First recorded 19861880
Girls / boys 1,324 / 061,855 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Abbys alive today are over 26; half the Abbigayles are over 21. 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 Abbigayle Abby
England and Wales 264,790

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: Abbigayle and Abby.