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Giles vs Gill

American parents have registered 4,732 Gileses since 1880, against 1,274 Gills. Giles is still ahead, with 12 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Giles against Gill, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Giles 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 145 years in which either name was published, Giles for 143 years and Gill for 2 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Giles Gill
Total US births 4,7321,274
Most in one year 8652
Babies in 2025 12under 5
Estimated living today 2,100840
Median age today 4963
Peak year 19181956
Best rank 667th boys1,140th boys
Rank in 2025 6,803rdunranked
First recorded 18801884
Girls / boys 0 / 4,73256 / 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 Gileses are over 49. That is 14 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 Giles Gill
France 19085
Belgium 11168
Scotland 2412

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: Giles and Gill.