Humanverse

Claire vs Claudine

American parents have registered 214,123 Claires since 1880, against 11,338 Claudines. Claire is still ahead, with 3,487 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Claire against Claudine, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Claire Claudine

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, Claire for 144 years and Claudine for 2 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Claire Claudine
Total US births 214,12311,338
Most in one year 5,216442
Babies in 2025 3,487under 5
Estimated living today 169,0005,700
Median age today 1957
Peak year 20161970
Best rank 40th girls468th girls
Rank in 2025 68thunranked
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 211,919 / 2,20411,323 / 15

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 Claudines alive today are over 57; half the Claires are over 19. That is 38 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 Claire Claudine
France 160,380158,965
Scotland 16,97616
Ireland 11,171144
England and Wales 3,14227
Northern Ireland 5453

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: Claire and Claudine.