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Indie vs Indigo

American parents have registered 5,242 Indigos since 1880, against 4,683 Indies. But in 2025 it was Indie that was commoner, 476 babies to 431.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Indie against Indigo, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Indie Indigo

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 42 years in which either name was published, Indigo for 29 years and Indie for 13 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Indie Indigo
Total US births 4,6835,242
Most in one year 579431
Babies in 2025 476431
Estimated living today 4,7005,200
Median age today 47
Peak year 20222025
Best rank 552nd girls853rd girls
Rank in 2025 632nd853rd
First recorded 19591971
Girls / boys 4,412 / 2714,020 / 1,222

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 Indigos alive today are over 7; half the Indies are over 4. 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 Indie Indigo
England and Wales 4,3911,608
Ireland 50415
Scotland 45815
France 705
Switzerland 1011

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: Indie and Indigo.