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Isaac vs Isadora

American parents have registered 332,292 Isaacs since 1880, against 4,668 Isadoras. Isaac is still ahead, with 5,963 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Isaac against Isadora, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Isaac Isadora

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

Isaac has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1906, when Isaac had 163 and Isadora had 14.

Side by side

  Isaac Isadora
Total US births 332,2924,668
Most in one year 10,287192
Babies in 2025 5,963177
Estimated living today 300,0003,900
Median age today 1712
Peak year 20072024
Best rank 41st boys1,223rd girls
Rank in 2025 47th1,261st
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 784 / 331,5084,668 / 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 Isaacs alive today are over 17; half the Isadoras are over 12. That is 5 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 Isaac Isadora
England and Wales 50,460639
France 29,605715
Belgium 2,10722
Scotland 1,9763
Ireland 1,67116
Switzerland 1,03932
Poland 372

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: Isaac and Isadora.