Humanverse

Abie vs Abigail

American parents have registered 413,935 Abigails since 1880, against 800 Abies. Abigail is still ahead, with 4,941 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Abie against Abigail, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Abie Abigail

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

Abigail 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 1921, when Abie had 15 and Abigail had 24.

Side by side

  Abie Abigail
Total US births 800413,935
Most in one year 2215,955
Babies in 2025 104,941
Estimated living today 410407,000
Median age today 2019
Peak year 19232003
Best rank 1,941st boys6th girls
Rank in 2025 7,679th41st
First recorded 18891880
Girls / boys 67 / 733413,263 / 672

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 Abie Abigail
England and Wales 4645,941
France 453,090

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: Abie and Abigail.