Precious vs Presley
American parents have registered 36,723 Presleys since 1880, against 19,540 Preciouses. Presley is still ahead, with 1,450 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Precious Presley
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 133 years in which either name was published, Precious for 72 years and Presley for 61 years. The lead changed hands 36 times.
- 1880–1894 Presley ahead
- 1897–1927 Precious ahead, apart from 2 short spells
- 1933–1953 Presley ahead, apart from 3 short spells
- 1960–2003 Precious ahead
- 2004–2025 Presley ahead
27 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Precious | Presley | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 19,540 | 36,723 |
| Most in one year | 746 | 1,886 |
| Babies in 2025 | 51 | 1,450 |
| Estimated living today | 19,000 | 36,000 |
| Median age today | 28 | 11 |
| Peak year | 2001 | 2014 |
| Best rank | 392nd girls | 190th girls |
| Rank in 2025 | 3,130th | 225th |
| First recorded | 1897 | 1880 |
| Girls / boys | 19,393 / 147 | 31,778 / 4,945 |
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 Preciouses alive today are over 28; half the Presleys are over 11. That is 17 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Precious Hawaii (3.3×), Louisiana (2.5×), Mississippi (2.2×)
- Presley Nevada (3.2×), Utah (2.8×), Idaho (2.4×)
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 | Precious | Presley |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 1,647 | 1,213 |
| France | 175 | 185 |
| Ireland | 161 | 11 |
| Scotland | 20 | 62 |
| Northern Ireland | 3 | 6 |
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: Precious and Presley.