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Prince vs Princeton

American parents have registered 24,151 Princes since 1880, against 10,256 Princetons. Prince is still ahead, with 703 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Prince against Princeton, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Prince Princeton

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

Prince 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 2015, when Prince had 830 and Princeton had 714.

Side by side

  Prince Princeton
Total US births 24,15110,256
Most in one year 1,164793
Babies in 2025 703422
Estimated living today 20,00010,000
Median age today 108
Peak year 20192017
Best rank 297th boys402nd boys
Rank in 2025 447th652nd
First recorded 18801950
Girls / boys 550 / 23,6010 / 10,256

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 Princes alive today are over 10; half the Princetons are over 8. That is 2 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 Prince Princeton
England and Wales 1,85551

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: Prince and Princeton.