Humanverse

Julia vs Juliana

American parents have registered 477,993 Julias since 1880, against 67,797 Julianas. Julia is still ahead, with 2,172 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Julia against Juliana, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Julia Juliana

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

Julia 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 2017, when Julia had 3,125 and Juliana had 2,003.

Side by side

  Julia Juliana
Total US births 477,99367,797
Most in one year 8,8492,225
Babies in 2025 2,1721,203
Estimated living today 314,00064,000
Median age today 3118
Peak year 20012007
Best rank 27th girls162nd girls
Rank in 2025 131st256th
First recorded 18801881
Girls / boys 476,250 / 1,74367,748 / 49

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 Julias alive today are over 31; half the Julianas are over 18. That is 13 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 Julia Juliana
Poland 275,985226
France 82,5755,460
England and Wales 11,970609
Switzerland 6,842545
Belgium 4,925248
Norway 4,904178
Ireland 4,81697
Scotland 2,27819
Northern Ireland 4743

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: Julia and Juliana.