Humanverse

Galilee vs Galileo

American parents have registered 648 Galilees since 1880, against 530 Galileos. Galilee is still ahead, with 40 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Galilee against Galileo, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Galilee Galileo

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 33 years in which either name was published, Galilee for 18 years and Galileo for 15 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

Side by side

  Galilee Galileo
Total US births 648530
Most in one year 6244
Babies in 2025 4025
Estimated living today 640520
Median age today 68
Peak year 20232022
Best rank 2,757th girls2,873rd boys
Rank in 2025 3,712th4,139th
First recorded 20011915
Girls / boys 648 / 00 / 530

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 Galileos alive today are over 8; half the Galilees are over 6. That is 2 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 Galilee Galileo
France 20 Galilée10
England and Wales 33

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: Galilee and Galileo.