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Gustave vs Gustavo

American parents have registered 40,461 Gustavos since 1880, against 5,430 Gustaves. Gustavo is still ahead, with 447 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Gustave against Gustavo, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Gustave Gustavo

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 146 years in which either name was published, Gustavo for 84 years and Gustave for 62 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Gustave Gustavo
Total US births 5,43040,461
Most in one year 1521,295
Babies in 2025 10447
Estimated living today 1,30038,000
Median age today 5325
Peak year 19152000
Best rank 441st boys260th boys
Rank in 2025 7,679th625th
First recorded 18801911
Girls / boys 0 / 5,430104 / 40,357

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 Gustaves alive today are over 53; half the Gustavos are over 25. That is 28 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 Gustave Gustavo
France 38,325415
Belgium 3736
Switzerland 111262
England and Wales 32200
Poland 411

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: Gustave and Gustavo.