Bea vs Bear

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Bea Bear

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 117 years in which either name was published, Bea for 92 years and Bear for 25 years. The lead changed hands 11 times.

• 1883–1974 Bea ahead
• 1975 Bear ahead
• 1977–1980 Bea ahead
• 1981 Bear ahead
• 1983–1992 Bea ahead
• 1994–1997 Bear ahead
• 1998 Bea ahead
• 2000 Bear ahead
• 2001 Bea ahead
• 2002 Bear ahead
• 2003–2006 Bea ahead
• 2007–2025 Bear ahead

Side by side

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 Beas alive today are over 13; half the Bears are over 5. That is 8 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Bea California (4.9×), New York (2.9×), Texas (1.7×)
• Bear Colorado (4.0×), Utah (3.9×), Oregon (2.5×)

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.

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

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• Bea vs Beatrice
• Bea vs Beau
• Bea vs Beatriz
• Bea vs Beatrix
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• Bear vs Beatrice
• Bear vs Beau
• Bear vs Beatriz