Humanverse

Garon vs Gary

American parents have registered 905,438 Garys since 1880, against 982 Garons. Gary is still ahead, with 201 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Garon against Gary, 1880 to 2025 0 10k 20k 30k 40k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Garon Gary

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

Gary 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 2010, when Garon had 21 and Gary had 547.

Side by side

  Garon Gary
Total US births 982905,438
Most in one year 3138,839
Babies in 2025 under 5201
Estimated living today 900601,000
Median age today 3467
Peak year 19791952
Best rank 1,788th boys10th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,073rd
First recorded 19411880
Girls / boys 0 / 9823,286 / 902,152

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 Garys alive today are over 67; half the Garons are over 34. That is 33 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Garon Gary
England and Wales 61,581

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: Garon and Gary.