Humanverse

Corbin vs Cornelius

American parents have registered 41,777 Corbins since 1880, against 37,049 Corneliuses. Corbin is still ahead, with 595 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Corbin against Cornelius, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Corbin Cornelius

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, Cornelius for 108 years and Corbin for 38 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Corbin Cornelius
Total US births 41,77737,049
Most in one year 1,943498
Babies in 2025 59582
Estimated living today 41,00020,000
Median age today 1645
Peak year 20141974
Best rank 203rd boys346th boys
Rank in 2025 512th1,906th
First recorded 18911880
Girls / boys 665 / 41,112642 / 36,407

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 Corneliuses alive today are over 45; half the Corbins are over 16. That is 29 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 Corbin Cornelius
England and Wales 443208
Scotland 1324

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: Corbin and Cornelius.