Humanverse

Bonita vs Bonnie

American parents have registered 332,712 Bonnies since 1880, against 37,854 Bonitas. Bonnie is still ahead, with 785 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Bonita against Bonnie, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Bonita Bonnie

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

Bonnie has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1963, when Bonita had 831 and Bonnie had 5,256.

Side by side

  Bonita Bonnie
Total US births 37,854332,712
Most in one year 1,52810,285
Babies in 2025 11785
Estimated living today 26,000208,000
Median age today 7069
Peak year 19501947
Best rank 181st girls35th girls
Rank in 2025 8,860th396th
First recorded 18881880
Girls / boys 37,842 / 12328,675 / 4,037

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 Bonita Bonnie
England and Wales 29513,031
Ireland 31,271

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: Bonita and Bonnie.