Humanverse

Arrie vs Arrow

American parents have registered 2,575 Arrows since 1880, against 2,110 Arries. Arrow is still ahead, with 113 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Arrie against Arrow, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Arrie Arrow

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 137 years in which either name was published, Arrie for 104 years and Arrow for 33 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

Side by side

  Arrie Arrow
Total US births 2,1102,575
Most in one year 51283
Babies in 2025 5113
Estimated living today 6202,600
Median age today 546
Peak year 19222018
Best rank 1,207th girls1,122nd boys
Rank in 2025 14,942nd1,976th
First recorded 18801971
Girls / boys 1,792 / 318858 / 1,717

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 Arries alive today are over 54; half the Arrows are over 6. That is 48 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 Arrie Arrow
England and Wales 460

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: Arrie and Arrow.