Humanverse

Alfie vs Alfred

American parents have registered 245,153 Alfreds since 1880, against 1,177 Alfies. Alfred is still ahead, with 293 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Alfie against Alfred, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Alfie Alfred

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

Alfred 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 2023, when Alfie had 71 and Alfred had 245.

Side by side

  Alfie Alfred
Total US births 1,177245,153
Most in one year 756,291
Babies in 2025 72293
Estimated living today 1,00083,000
Median age today 1164
Peak year 20241928
Best rank 2,028th boys33rd boys
Rank in 2025 2,056th840th
First recorded 19151880
Girls / boys 128 / 1,0491,292 / 243,861

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 Alfreds alive today are over 64; half the Alfies are over 11. That is 53 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 Alfie Alfred
England and Wales 88,51113,182
France 10065,930
Scotland 4,537314
Ireland 2,310338
Northern Ireland 1,94759
Belgium 84123
Switzerland 37100
Poland 261

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: Alfie and Alfred.