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Freddie vs Frederick

American parents have registered 267,165 Fredericks since 1880, against 83,643 Freddies. Frederick is still ahead, with 728 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Freddie Frederick

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

Frederick has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1938, when Freddie had 1,532 and Frederick had 2,947.

Side by side

  Freddie Frederick
Total US births 83,643267,165
Most in one year 1,9584,997
Babies in 2025 130728
Estimated living today 43,000132,000
Median age today 6560
Peak year 19471951
Best rank 153rd boys78th boys
Rank in 2025 1,509th435th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 10,328 / 73,3151,105 / 266,060

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 Freddies alive today are over 65; half the Fredericks are over 60. That is 5 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 Freddie Frederick
England and Wales 49,53320,820
France 1554,865
Scotland 1,934603
Ireland 1,104709
Northern Ireland 923140
New Zealand 10699
Poland 257

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: Freddie and Frederick.