Humanverse

Bode vs Bodey

American parents have registered 4,759 Bodes since 1880, against 642 Bodeys. Bode is still ahead, with 347 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Bode Bodey

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 31 years in which either name was published, Bode for 25 years and Bodey for 6 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Bode Bodey
Total US births 4,759642
Most in one year 34744
Babies in 2025 34744
Estimated living today 4,700640
Median age today 911
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 748th boys2,833rd boys
Rank in 2025 748th2,833rd
First recorded 19981992
Girls / boys 0 / 4,7590 / 642

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 Bodeys alive today are over 11; half the Bodes are over 9. That is 2 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 Bode Bodey
England and Wales 1454

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 Bodey.