Humanverse

Olive vs Olivea

American parents have registered 67,320 Olives since 1880, against 644 Oliveas. Olive is still ahead, with 1,604 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Olive Olivea

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, Olive for 144 years and Olivea for 2 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Olive Olivea
Total US births 67,320644
Most in one year 1,84148
Babies in 2025 1,6047
Estimated living today 25,000620
Median age today 717
Peak year 20222008
Best rank 158th girls3,420th girls
Rank in 2025 197th11,932nd
First recorded 18801917
Girls / boys 66,926 / 394644 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Oliveas alive today are over 17; half the Olives are over 7. That is 10 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 Olive Olivea
England and Wales 7,70710

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: Olive and Olivea.