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Finnegan vs Finnigan

American parents have registered 13,115 Finnegans since 1880, against 1,353 Finnigans. Finnegan is still ahead, with 575 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Finnegan against Finnigan, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Finnegan Finnigan

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

Finnegan has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1995 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2002, when Finnegan had 68 and Finnigan had 12.

Side by side

  Finnegan Finnigan
Total US births 13,1151,353
Most in one year 865103
Babies in 2025 57550
Estimated living today 13,0001,300
Median age today 99
Peak year 20212016
Best rank 378th boys1,585th boys
Rank in 2025 526th2,604th
First recorded 19951999
Girls / boys 104 / 13,0110 / 1,353

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 Finnegan Finnigan
England and Wales 21121

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: Finnegan and Finnigan.