Humanverse

Ed vs Eddie

American parents have registered 227,627 Eddies since 1880, against 26,370 Eds. Eddie is still ahead, with 287 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ed against Eddie, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ed Eddie

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, Eddie for 133 years and Ed for 13 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Ed Eddie
Total US births 26,370227,627
Most in one year 6964,715
Babies in 2025 under 5287
Estimated living today 8,200123,000
Median age today 6561
Peak year 19591947
Best rank 297th boys80th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked860th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 165 / 26,20515,760 / 211,867

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 Eds alive today are over 65; half the Eddies are over 61. That is 4 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 Ed Eddie
England and Wales 1234,106
Ireland 7312
Scotland 3138
Belgium 521

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: Ed and Eddie.