Bette vs Bettie

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Bette Bettie

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 144 years in which either name was published, Bettie for 112 years and Bette for 32 years. The lead changed hands 20 times.

• 1880–1917 Bettie ahead
• 1918–1927 Bette ahead
• 1928–1945 Bettie ahead, apart from one short spell
• 1949–1956 Bette ahead
• 1957–1960 Bettie ahead
• 1963–1965 Bette ahead
• 1966–2022 Bettie ahead, apart from 2 short spells

11 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

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.

Where each one is strongest

• Bette Iowa (3.0×), Nebraska (2.8×), Montana (2.7×)
• Bettie Mississippi (6.7×), North Carolina (4.1×), Alabama (3.7×)

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

Related comparisons

• Bette vs Beth
• Bettie vs Betty
• Bette vs Betty
• Bette vs Bethany
• Bette vs Betsy
• Bette vs Bettye
• Bettie vs Beth
• Bettie vs Bethany