Humanverse

Neiko vs Neil

American parents have registered 105,254 Neils since 1880, against 797 Neikos. Neil is still ahead, with 288 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Neiko Neil

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

Neil 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 2020, when Neiko had 46 and Neil had 324.

Side by side

  Neiko Neil
Total US births 797105,254
Most in one year 461,964
Babies in 2025 26288
Estimated living today 79071,000
Median age today 1351
Peak year 20201954
Best rank 2,689th boys147th boys
Rank in 2025 4,050th850th
First recorded 19881880
Girls / boys 0 / 797385 / 104,869

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 Neils alive today are over 51; half the Neikos are over 13. That is 38 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 Neiko Neil
England and Wales 211,491

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: Neiko and Neil.