Humanverse

Jud vs Jude

American parents have registered 57,006 Judes since 1880, against 633 Juds. Jude is still ahead, with 2,477 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jud against Jude, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jud Jude

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 113 years in which either name was published, Jude for 104 years and Jud for 9 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Jud Jude
Total US births 63357,006
Most in one year 172,806
Babies in 2025 62,477
Estimated living today 41055,000
Median age today 5710
Peak year 19612015
Best rank 1,997th boys156th boys
Rank in 2025 10,695th155th
First recorded 19151912
Girls / boys 0 / 6333,024 / 53,982

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 Juds alive today are over 57; half the Judes are over 10. That is 47 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Jud Jude
England and Wales 626,759
France 202,565

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: Jud and Jude.