Humanverse

Finn vs Finnegan

American parents have registered 35,380 Finns since 1880, against 13,115 Finnegans. Finn is still ahead, with 1,717 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Finn Finnegan

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

Finn has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1918 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2009, when Finn had 942 and Finnegan had 489.

Side by side

  Finn Finnegan
Total US births 35,38013,115
Most in one year 2,417865
Babies in 2025 1,717575
Estimated living today 35,00013,000
Median age today 89
Peak year 20172021
Best rank 167th boys378th boys
Rank in 2025 206th526th
First recorded 19181995
Girls / boys 431 / 34,949104 / 13,011

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 Finn Finnegan
England and Wales 15,171211

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: Finn and Finnegan.