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Clarissa vs Clayton

American parents have registered 139,954 Claytons since 1880, against 40,505 Clarissas. Clayton is still ahead, with 1,130 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Clarissa against Clayton, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Clarissa Clayton

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

Clayton 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 1992, when Clarissa had 1,140 and Clayton had 1,914.

Side by side

  Clarissa Clayton
Total US births 40,505139,954
Most in one year 1,2012,577
Babies in 2025 2121,130
Estimated living today 37,000104,000
Median age today 3031
Peak year 19952000
Best rank 239th girls151st boys
Rank in 2025 1,113th300th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 40,484 / 21610 / 139,344

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 Clarissa Clayton
England and Wales 8552,346
France 610675
Ireland 40252
Scotland 18121
Belgium 2811
Northern Ireland 1317

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: Clarissa and Clayton.