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Drake vs Drayton

American parents have registered 36,875 Drakes since 1880, against 2,063 Draytons. Drake is still ahead, with 299 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Drake Drayton

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 104 years in which either name was published, Drake for 86 years and Drayton for 18 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Drake Drayton
Total US births 36,8752,063
Most in one year 1,88578
Babies in 2025 29950
Estimated living today 36,0001,800
Median age today 1919
Peak year 20102012
Best rank 196th boys1,863rd boys
Rank in 2025 827th2,604th
First recorded 19181915
Girls / boys 83 / 36,7920 / 2,063

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 Drake Drayton
England and Wales 3413

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: Drake and Drayton.