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Beata vs Beau

American parents have registered 66,603 Beaus since 1880, against 956 Beatas. Beau is still ahead, with 5,224 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Beata against Beau, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Beata Beau

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 121 years in which either name was published, Beau for 85 years and Beata for 36 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Beata Beau
Total US births 95666,603
Most in one year 265,224
Babies in 2025 under 55,224
Estimated living today 61065,000
Median age today 448
Peak year 19162025
Best rank 1,445th girls60th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked60th
First recorded 18931932
Girls / boys 956 / 01,011 / 65,592

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 Beatas alive today are over 44; half the Beaus are over 8. That is 36 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 Beata Beau
England and Wales 6410,522
Ireland 10389

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: Beata and Beau.