Humanverse

Joud vs Journey

American parents have registered 22,893 Journeys since 1880, against 677 Jouds. Journey is still ahead, with 836 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Joud against Journey, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Joud Journey

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

Journey has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1981 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Joud had 70 and Journey had 836.

Side by side

  Joud Journey
Total US births 67722,893
Most in one year 701,504
Babies in 2025 70836
Estimated living today 67023,000
Median age today 69
Peak year 20242018
Best rank 4,294th girls226th girls
Rank in 2025 4,352nd411th
First recorded 20021981
Girls / boys 372 / 30520,882 / 2,011

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 Journeys alive today are over 9; half the Jouds are over 6. 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 Joud Journey
England and Wales 22751

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: Joud and Journey.