Humanverse

Inga vs Ingeborg

American parents have registered 4,127 Ingas since 1880, against 793 Ingeborgs. Inga is still ahead, with 10 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Inga against Ingeborg, 1880 to 2025 0 30 60 90 120 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Inga Ingeborg

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, Inga for 137 years and Ingeborg for 9 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Inga Ingeborg
Total US births 4,127793
Most in one year 11531
Babies in 2025 10under 5
Estimated living today 2,400150
Median age today 5268
Peak year 19691930
Best rank 1,007th girls1,371st girls
Rank in 2025 9,457thunranked
First recorded 18801886
Girls / boys 4,127 / 0793 / 0

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 Ingeborgs alive today are over 68; half the Ingas are over 52. That is 16 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 Inga Ingeborg
Norway 2,5156,112
France 40180

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: Inga and Ingeborg.