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Archibald vs Archie

American parents have registered 57,535 Archies since 1880, against 3,985 Archibalds. Archie is still ahead, with 1,134 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Archibald against Archie, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Archibald Archie

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

Archie 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 2014, when Archibald had 46 and Archie had 110.

Side by side

  Archibald Archie
Total US births 3,98557,535
Most in one year 1841,137
Babies in 2025 1841,134
Estimated living today 1,90022,000
Median age today 754
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 1,145th boys301st boys
Rank in 2025 1,145th301st
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 0 / 3,9851,291 / 56,244

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 Archies alive today are over 54; half the Archibalds are over 7. That is 47 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 Archibald Archie
England and Wales 2,05162,430
Scotland 4004,419
France 1,085195
Northern Ireland 31,070
Belgium 262127
Switzerland 5044
Poland 919

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: Archibald and Archie.