Humanverse

Sandra vs Sanem

American parents have registered 878,223 Sandras since 1880, against 73 Sanems. Sandra is still ahead, with 188 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sandra against Sanem, 1880 to 2025 0 10k 20k 30k 40k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sandra Sanem

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

Sandra has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1904 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2021, when Sandra had 259 and Sanem had 23.

Side by side

  Sandra Sanem
Total US births 878,22373
Most in one year 34,85223
Babies in 2025 18810
Estimated living today 659,00070
Median age today 683
Peak year 19472021
Best rank 5th girls5,398th girls
Rank in 2025 1,207th9,457th
First recorded 19042021
Girls / boys 875,531 / 2,69273 / 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 Sandras alive today are over 68; half the Sanems are over 3. That is 65 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 Sandra Sanem
France 103,91525
England and Wales 1,08211

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: Sandra and Sanem.