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Hal vs Hallie

American parents have registered 41,711 Hallies since 1880, against 16,796 Hals. Hallie is still ahead, with 2,260 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Hal against Hallie, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Hal Hallie

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, Hallie for 103 years and Hal for 43 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.

Side by side

  Hal Hallie
Total US births 16,79641,711
Most in one year 5982,260
Babies in 2025 382,260
Estimated living today 8,40031,000
Median age today 6717
Peak year 19562025
Best rank 305th boys120th girls
Rank in 2025 3,128th120th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 12 / 16,78440,376 / 1,335

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 Hals alive today are over 67; half the Hallies are over 17. That is 50 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 Hal Hallie
England and Wales 44911,119
Scotland 31,088

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: Hal and Hallie.