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Gil vs Gilbert

American parents have registered 130,821 Gilberts since 1880, against 4,971 Gils. Gilbert is still ahead, with 145 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Gil against Gilbert, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Gil Gilbert

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

Gilbert 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 2024, when Gil had 27 and Gilbert had 135.

Side by side

  Gil Gilbert
Total US births 4,971130,821
Most in one year 1242,138
Babies in 2025 20145
Estimated living today 3,90062,000
Median age today 4759
Peak year 19571930
Best rank 685th boys90th boys
Rank in 2025 4,857th1,328th
First recorded 19141880
Girls / boys 0 / 4,971673 / 130,148

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 Gilberts alive today are over 59; half the Gils are over 47. That is 12 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 Gil Gilbert
France 3,665180,135
England and Wales 170582
Belgium 4115
Scotland 354

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: Gil and Gilbert.