Humanverse

Sanda vs Santiago

American parents have registered 103,965 Santiagos since 1880, against 604 Sandas. Santiago is still ahead, with 7,560 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sanda against Santiago, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sanda Santiago

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

Santiago 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 1947, when Sanda had 23 and Santiago had 108.

Side by side

  Sanda Santiago
Total US births 604103,965
Most in one year 237,560
Babies in 2025 under 57,560
Estimated living today 47099,000
Median age today 638
Peak year 19472025
Best rank 2,045th girls26th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked26th
First recorded 19301880
Girls / boys 604 / 0137 / 103,828

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 Sandas alive today are over 63; half the Santiagos are over 8. That is 55 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 Sanda Santiago
France 552,310

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: Sanda and Santiago.