Humanverse

Libbie vs Liberty

American parents have registered 15,409 Libertys since 1880, against 2,513 Libbies. Liberty is still ahead, with 195 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Libbie against Liberty, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Libbie Liberty

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 146 years in which either name was published, Libbie for 86 years and Liberty for 60 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

Side by side

  Libbie Liberty
Total US births 2,51315,409
Most in one year 49754
Babies in 2025 7195
Estimated living today 1,10015,000
Median age today 2816
Peak year 19152004
Best rank 944th girls406th girls
Rank in 2025 11,932nd1,186th
First recorded 18801912
Girls / boys 2,513 / 015,255 / 154

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 Libbies alive today are over 28; half the Libertys are over 16. That is 12 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 Libbie Liberty
England and Wales 9584,200

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: Libbie and Liberty.