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Grace vs Gracelyn

American parents have registered 536,340 Graces since 1880, against 15,917 Gracelyns. Grace is still ahead, with 5,139 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Grace against Gracelyn, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Grace Gracelyn

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

Grace 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 2020, when Grace had 5,633 and Gracelyn had 973.

Side by side

  Grace Gracelyn
Total US births 536,34015,917
Most in one year 12,801980
Babies in 2025 5,139659
Estimated living today 313,00016,000
Median age today 219
Peak year 20032018
Best rank 13th girls333rd girls
Rank in 2025 38th466th
First recorded 18801924
Girls / boys 534,935 / 1,40515,917 / 0

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 Graces alive today are over 21; half the Gracelyns are over 9. 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 Grace Gracelyn
England and Wales 80,52092
Ireland 13,6273
Scotland 6,3114

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: Grace and Gracelyn.