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Oliver vs Oliviah

American parents have registered 270,680 Olivers since 1880, against 717 Oliviahs. Oliver is still ahead, with 14,963 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Oliver against Oliviah, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Oliver Oliviah

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

Oliver 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 2006, when Oliver had 2,352 and Oliviah had 34.

Side by side

  Oliver Oliviah
Total US births 270,680717
Most in one year 15,42153
Babies in 2025 14,9639
Estimated living today 231,000710
Median age today 713
Peak year 20242011
Best rank 3rd boys3,132nd girls
Rank in 2025 3rd10,107th
First recorded 18801992
Girls / boys 777 / 269,903717 / 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 Oliviahs alive today are over 13; half the Olivers are over 7. That is 6 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 Oliver Oliviah
England and Wales 160,3517

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: Oliver and Oliviah.