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Princeton vs Priya

American parents have registered 10,256 Princetons since 1880, against 6,562 Priyas. Princeton is still ahead, with 422 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Princeton against Priya, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Princeton Priya

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 66 years in which either name was published, Priya for 41 years and Princeton for 25 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Princeton Priya
Total US births 10,2566,562
Most in one year 793211
Babies in 2025 42299
Estimated living today 10,0006,500
Median age today 821
Peak year 20172014
Best rank 402nd boys1,164th girls
Rank in 2025 652nd1,942nd
First recorded 19501969
Girls / boys 0 / 10,2566,562 / 0

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 Priyas alive today are over 21; half the Princetons are over 8. That is 13 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 Princeton Priya
England and Wales 512,993

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: Princeton and Priya.