Humanverse

Isaak vs Isaiah

American parents have registered 254,710 Isaiahs since 1880, against 4,271 Isaaks. Isaiah is still ahead, with 5,273 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Isaak Isaiah

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

Isaiah 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 1976, when Isaak had 5 and Isaiah had 203.

Side by side

  Isaak Isaiah
Total US births 4,271254,710
Most in one year 21810,483
Babies in 2025 485,273
Estimated living today 4,200246,000
Median age today 1717
Peak year 20092006
Best rank 940th boys39th boys
Rank in 2025 2,676th57th
First recorded 19761880
Girls / boys 0 / 4,271690 / 254,020

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.

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 Isaak Isaiah
France 9504,820 Isaïah
England and Wales 3714,967
Belgium 325439
Switzerland 96296
Poland 24

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: Isaak and Isaiah.