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Kirsten vs Kirstin

American parents have registered 53,393 Kirstens since 1880, against 8,778 Kirstins. Kirsten is still ahead, with 60 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kirsten against Kirstin, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kirsten Kirstin

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

Kirsten has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1937 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1984, when Kirsten had 730 and Kirstin had 166.

Side by side

  Kirsten Kirstin
Total US births 53,3938,778
Most in one year 1,938413
Babies in 2025 60under 5
Estimated living today 51,0008,500
Median age today 3435
Peak year 19911990
Best rank 154th girls564th girls
Rank in 2025 2,822ndunranked
First recorded 19371942
Girls / boys 53,181 / 2128,778 / 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.

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 Kirsten Kirstin
Scotland 2,845979
England and Wales 2,237244
Ireland 39130
Northern Ireland 21917

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: Kirsten and Kirstin.