Humanverse

Hendrix vs Henley

American parents have registered 14,396 Hendrixes since 1880, against 8,272 Henleys. Hendrix is still ahead, with 975 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Hendrix Henley

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 75 years in which either name was published, Henley for 46 years and Hendrix for 29 years. The lead changed hands 18 times.

10 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Hendrix Henley
Total US births 14,3968,272
Most in one year 1,355699
Babies in 2025 975317
Estimated living today 14,0008,100
Median age today 58
Peak year 20222016
Best rank 273rd boys511th girls
Rank in 2025 354th1,000th
First recorded 18851912
Girls / boys 856 / 13,5406,725 / 1,547

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 Henleys alive today are over 8; half the Hendrixes are over 5. That is 3 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 Hendrix Henley
England and Wales 1,4311,718
France 1555
Scotland 217

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: Hendrix and Henley.