Humanverse

Charlotte vs Olivia

American parents have registered 568,136 Olivias since 1880, against 454,204 Charlottes. Olivia is still ahead, with 13,554 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Charlotte against Olivia, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Charlotte Olivia

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 146 years in which either name was published, Charlotte for 96 years and Olivia for 50 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Charlotte Olivia
Total US births 454,204568,136
Most in one year 13,40819,863
Babies in 2025 13,40813,554
Estimated living today 323,000543,000
Median age today 1315
Peak year 20252014
Best rank 2nd girls2nd girls
Rank in 2025 2nd1st
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 453,433 / 771567,345 / 791

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 Olivias alive today are over 15; half the Charlottes are over 13. That is 2 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

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 Charlotte Olivia
England and Wales 90,072125,494
France 155,07550,020
Belgium 11,41110,337
New Zealand 9,1069,975
Scotland 6,99210,456
Norway 6,5465,649
Ireland 3,7398,441
Poland 34410,211
Denmark 2,8187,362
Italy 1,4278,568
Switzerland 2,6674,612
Northern Ireland 2,2123,494
Austria 1,4753,167

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: Charlotte and Olivia.