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Pricilla vs Priscilla

American parents have registered 123,040 Priscillas since 1880, against 4,466 Pricillas. Priscilla is still ahead, with 555 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Pricilla Priscilla

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

Priscilla 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 1886, when Pricilla had 8 and Priscilla had 42.

Side by side

  Pricilla Priscilla
Total US births 4,466123,040
Most in one year 1251,998
Babies in 2025 13555
Estimated living today 3,90090,000
Median age today 3643
Peak year 19901942
Best rank 1,300th girls135th girls
Rank in 2025 7,885th544th
First recorded 18831880
Girls / boys 4,466 / 0122,796 / 244

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 Priscillas alive today are over 43; half the Pricillas are over 36. That is 7 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 Pricilla Priscilla
France 12013,505
England and Wales 6835
Ireland 3261

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: Pricilla and Priscilla.