Humanverse

Fred vs Freyja

American parents have registered 345,684 Freds since 1880, against 3,858 Freyjas. But in 2025 it was Freyja that was commoner, 352 babies to 80.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Fred against Freyja, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Fred Freyja

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, Fred for 135 years and Freyja for 11 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Fred Freyja
Total US births 345,6843,858
Most in one year 6,566473
Babies in 2025 80352
Estimated living today 97,0003,800
Median age today 704
Peak year 19242023
Best rank 32nd boys627th girls
Rank in 2025 1,932nd770th
First recorded 18801994
Girls / boys 2,029 / 343,6553,858 / 0

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 Freds alive today are over 70; half the Freyjas are over 4. That is 66 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 Fred Freyja
France 4,345335
England and Wales 1,6471,903
Scotland 40240
Ireland 10164
Switzerland 4391
Belgium 545
Northern Ireland 340
Poland 22

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: Fred and Freyja.