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Said vs Sailor

American parents have registered 4,290 Sailors since 1880, against 3,166 Saids. Sailor is still ahead, with 246 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Said against Sailor, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Said Sailor

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 60 years in which either name was published, Said for 43 years and Sailor for 17 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

Side by side

  Said Sailor
Total US births 3,1664,290
Most in one year 165294
Babies in 2025 107246
Estimated living today 3,1004,300
Median age today 158
Peak year 20102016
Best rank 1,127th boys1,064th girls
Rank in 2025 1,585th1,132nd
First recorded 19611997
Girls / boys 0 / 3,1663,603 / 687

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 Saids alive today are over 15; half the Sailors are over 8. 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 Said Sailor
France 13,11015
England and Wales 47470

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: Said and Sailor.