Humanverse

Samuel vs Samuele

American parents have registered 823,085 Samuels since 1880, against 248 Samueles. Samuel is still ahead, with 8,342 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Samuel against Samuele, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Samuel Samuele

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

Samuel 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 2021, when Samuel had 8,586 and Samuele had 12.

Side by side

  Samuel Samuele
Total US births 823,085248
Most in one year 14,84514
Babies in 2025 8,342under 5
Estimated living today 627,000240
Median age today 2721
Peak year 20011999
Best rank 26th boys4,762nd boys
Rank in 2025 18thunranked
First recorded 18801985
Girls / boys 2,889 / 820,1960 / 248

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 Samuels alive today are over 27; half the Samueles are over 21. That is 6 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Samuel Samuele
England and Wales 109,273174
Italy 26,58672,948
France 97,38085
Switzerland 6,748760
Belgium 5,54140
Poland 4,85827

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: Samuel and Samuele.