Humanverse

Beau vs Beauty

American parents have registered 66,603 Beaus since 1880, against 756 Beautys. Beau is still ahead, with 5,224 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Beau Beauty

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 113 years in which either name was published, Beau for 79 years and Beauty for 34 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

Side by side

  Beau Beauty
Total US births 66,603756
Most in one year 5,22428
Babies in 2025 5,22419
Estimated living today 65,000480
Median age today 813
Peak year 20252018
Best rank 60th boys4,768th girls
Rank in 2025 60th6,116th
First recorded 19321902
Girls / boys 1,011 / 65,592756 / 0

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

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Beau Beauty
England and Wales 10,52210
France 55

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: Beau and Beauty.