Humanverse

Hilma vs Hilton

American parents have registered 6,990 Hiltons since 1880, against 2,999 Hilmas. Hilton is still ahead, with 18 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Hilma against Hilton, 1880 to 2025 0 40 80 120 160 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Hilma Hilton

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, Hilton for 111 years and Hilma for 35 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Hilma Hilton
Total US births 2,9996,990
Most in one year 105143
Babies in 2025 under 518
Estimated living today 2503,100
Median age today 8056
Peak year 19151920
Best rank 644th girls521st boys
Rank in 2025 unranked6,446th
First recorded 18801882
Girls / boys 2,999 / 065 / 6,925

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 Hilmas alive today are over 80; half the Hiltons are over 56. That is 24 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 Hilma Hilton
France 18555

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: Hilma and Hilton.