Humanverse

Hayden vs Haydn

American parents have registered 147,508 Haydens since 1880, against 2,247 Haydns. Hayden is still ahead, with 2,975 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Hayden against Haydn, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Hayden Haydn

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

Hayden 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 1967, when Hayden had 29 and Haydn had 5.

Side by side

  Hayden Haydn
Total US births 147,5082,247
Most in one year 8,611124
Babies in 2025 2,97520
Estimated living today 144,0002,200
Median age today 1719
Peak year 20062003
Best rank 73rd boys1,324th boys
Rank in 2025 161st5,861st
First recorded 18801915
Girls / boys 33,424 / 114,084402 / 1,845

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 Haydns alive today are over 19; half the Haydens are over 17. That is 2 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 Hayden Haydn
England and Wales 13,0542,431
France 6,07025
Scotland 1,119152
Ireland 5383
Northern Ireland 2003

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: Hayden and Haydn.