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Gabby vs Gabriela

American parents have registered 86,553 Gabrielas since 1880, against 1,262 Gabbys. Gabriela is still ahead, with 961 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Gabby against Gabriela, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Gabby Gabriela

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

Gabriela has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1903 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1961, when Gabby had 5 and Gabriela had 39.

Side by side

  Gabby Gabriela
Total US births 1,26286,553
Most in one year 673,369
Babies in 2025 49961
Estimated living today 1,30085,000
Median age today 1223
Peak year 20222003
Best rank 2,604th girls102nd girls
Rank in 2025 3,211th317th
First recorded 19611903
Girls / boys 1,246 / 1686,182 / 371

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 Gabrielas alive today are over 23; half the Gabbys are over 12. That is 11 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 Gabby Gabriela
England and Wales 483,381
France 552,640
Ireland 3551

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: Gabby and Gabriela.