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Parker vs Parris

American parents have registered 163,836 Parkers since 1880, against 3,572 Parrises. Parker is still ahead, with 6,013 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Parker Parris

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 1974, when Parker had 28 and Parris had 26.

Side by side

  Parker Parris
Total US births 163,8363,572
Most in one year 7,126121
Babies in 2025 6,01312
Estimated living today 159,0003,300
Median age today 1231
Peak year 20141993
Best rank 73rd boys1,472nd boys
Rank in 2025 102nd12,008th
First recorded 18801917
Girls / boys 32,895 / 130,9411,669 / 1,903

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 Parrises alive today are over 31; half the Parkers are over 12. That is 19 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 Parker Parris
England and Wales 5,328167

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: Parker and Parris.