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Jolene vs Jolie

American parents have registered 36,236 Jolenes since 1880, against 14,099 Jolies. Jolene is still ahead, with 423 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jolene against Jolie, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jolene Jolie

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 108 years in which either name was published, Jolene for 93 years and Jolie for 15 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Jolene Jolie
Total US births 36,23614,099
Most in one year 1,060546
Babies in 2025 423243
Estimated living today 32,00014,000
Median age today 4518
Peak year 19742008
Best rank 245th girls563rd girls
Rank in 2025 666th1,029th
First recorded 19181947
Girls / boys 36,224 / 1214,099 / 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 Jolenes alive today are over 45; half the Jolies are over 18. That is 27 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 Jolene Jolie
England and Wales 372746
Scotland 21622
Switzerland 12582
Belgium 61138
France 16035
Ireland 12210
Northern Ireland 173

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: Jolene and Jolie.