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Ignacy vs Ignatius

American parents have registered 4,075 Ignatiuses since 1880, against 14 Ignacys. Ignatius is still ahead, with 100 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ignacy against Ignatius, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ignacy Ignatius

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

Ignatius has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1885 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2012, when Ignacy had 5 and Ignatius had 38.

Side by side

  Ignacy Ignatius
Total US births 144,075
Most in one year 9100
Babies in 2025 under 5100
Estimated living today 141,900
Median age today 312
Peak year 20222025
Best rank 8,300th boys1,663rd boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,663rd
First recorded 20121885
Girls / boys 0 / 140 / 4,075

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 Ignatiuses alive today are over 12; half the Ignacys are over 3. That is 9 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.

Country Ignacy Ignatius
Poland 47,5732
England and Wales 467136
Ireland 11835
Scotland 353

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: Ignacy and Ignatius.