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Christine vs Christopher

American parents have registered 2,079,103 Christophers since 1880, against 588,495 Christines. Christopher is still ahead, with 4,748 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Christine against Christopher, 1880 to 2025 0 20k 40k 60k 80k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Christine Christopher

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, Christine for 75 years and Christopher for 71 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Christine Christopher
Total US births 588,4952,079,103
Most in one year 17,57760,411
Babies in 2025 1764,748
Estimated living today 461,0001.9 million
Median age today 5741
Peak year 19521984
Best rank 20th girls2nd boys
Rank in 2025 1,272nd68th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 586,465 / 2,0309,507 / 2,069,596

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 Christines alive today are over 57; half the Christophers are over 41. That is 16 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 Christine Christopher
France 280,64038,560
New Zealand 10,60423,459
Scotland 2,50326,850
England and Wales 1,30527,096
Ireland 3,37614,157
Norway 5,8533,187
Austria 2,5165,640
Italy 3212,525
Northern Ireland 751,845
Belgium 1571,026
Poland 7359

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: Christine and Christopher.