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Paradise vs Parker

American parents have registered 163,836 Parkers since 1880, against 1,273 Paradises. Parker is still ahead, with 6,013 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Paradise against Parker, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Paradise Parker

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

Parker 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 1977, when Paradise had 5 and Parker had 71.

Side by side

  Paradise Parker
Total US births 1,273163,836
Most in one year 557,126
Babies in 2025 286,013
Estimated living today 1,300159,000
Median age today 1612
Peak year 20192014
Best rank 2,962nd girls73rd boys
Rank in 2025 4,758th102nd
First recorded 19771880
Girls / boys 1,273 / 032,895 / 130,941

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 Paradises alive today are over 16; half the Parkers are over 12. That is 4 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 Paradise Parker
England and Wales 245,328

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: Paradise and Parker.