Humanverse

Gil vs Gill

American parents have registered 4,971 Gils since 1880, against 1,274 Gills. Gil is still ahead, with 20 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Gil against Gill, 1880 to 2025 0 40 80 120 160 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Gil Gill

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 112 years in which either name was published, Gil for 109 years and Gill for 3 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Gil Gill
Total US births 4,9711,274
Most in one year 12452
Babies in 2025 20under 5
Estimated living today 3,900840
Median age today 4763
Peak year 19571956
Best rank 685th boys1,140th boys
Rank in 2025 4,857thunranked
First recorded 19141884
Girls / boys 0 / 4,97156 / 1,218

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 Gills alive today are over 63; half the Gils are over 47. That is 16 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 Gill
France 3,66585
Belgium 411168
Scotland 312

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 Gill.