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Sanem vs Santiago

American parents have registered 103,965 Santiagos since 1880, against 73 Sanems. Santiago is still ahead, with 7,560 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Sanem 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 2021, when Sanem had 23 and Santiago had 5,082.

Side by side

  Sanem Santiago
Total US births 73103,965
Most in one year 237,560
Babies in 2025 107,560
Estimated living today 7099,000
Median age today 38
Peak year 20212025
Best rank 5,398th girls26th boys
Rank in 2025 9,457th26th
First recorded 20211880
Girls / boys 73 / 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 Santiagos alive today are over 8; half the Sanems are over 3. That is 5 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 Sanem Santiago
France 252,310
England and Wales 111,991

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: Sanem and Santiago.