Humanverse

Dove vs Dovie

American parents have registered 9,086 Dovies since 1880, against 1,473 Doves. But in 2025 it was Dove that was commoner, 144 babies to 30.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dove against Dovie, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dove Dovie

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 144 years in which either name was published, Dovie for 121 years and Dove for 23 years. The lead changed hands 13 times.

8 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Dove Dovie
Total US births 1,4739,086
Most in one year 144235
Babies in 2025 14430
Estimated living today 1,1001,900
Median age today 567
Peak year 20251917
Best rank 1,484th girls414th girls
Rank in 2025 1,484th4,546th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 1,436 / 379,076 / 10

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 Dovies alive today are over 67; half the Doves are over 5. That is 62 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 Dove Dovie
England and Wales 666

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: Dove and Dovie.