Humanverse

Bode vs Boden

American parents have registered 4,805 Bodens since 1880, against 4,759 Bodes. But in 2025 it was Bode that was commoner, 347 babies to 333.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bode against Boden, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bode Boden

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 34 years in which either name was published, Boden for 20 years and Bode for 14 years. The lead changed hands 13 times.

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

Side by side

  Bode Boden
Total US births 4,7594,805
Most in one year 347344
Babies in 2025 347333
Estimated living today 4,7004,800
Median age today 98
Peak year 20252023
Best rank 748th boys757th boys
Rank in 2025 748th769th
First recorded 19981987
Girls / boys 0 / 4,7590 / 4,805

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

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 Bode Boden
England and Wales 145348

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: Bode and Boden.