Gwendolen vs Gwendolynn

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Gwendolen Gwendolynn

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 101 years in which either name was published, Gwendolynn for 73 years and Gwendolen for 28 years. The lead changed hands 11 times.

• 1903–1921 Gwendolen ahead
• 1923 Gwendolynn ahead
• 1925–1926 Gwendolen ahead
• 1929 Gwendolynn ahead
• 1931–1933 Gwendolen ahead
• 1934 Gwendolynn ahead
• 1935 Gwendolen ahead
• 1937–1963 Gwendolynn ahead
• 1964–1978 Gwendolen ahead
• 1979–2014 Gwendolynn ahead
• 2015 Gwendolen ahead
• 2016–2025 Gwendolynn ahead

Side by side

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 Gwendolens alive today are over 48; half the Gwendolynns are over 24. That is 24 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

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

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