Humanverse

Scot vs Scout

American parents have registered 13,732 Scots since 1880, against 7,221 Scouts. But in 2025 it was Scout that was commoner, 385 babies to 6.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Scot against Scout, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Scot Scout

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 85 years in which either name was published, Scot for 54 years and Scout for 31 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Scot Scout
Total US births 13,7327,221
Most in one year 633620
Babies in 2025 6385
Estimated living today 11,0007,200
Median age today 578
Peak year 19702022
Best rank 310th boys689th girls
Rank in 2025 10,695th995th
First recorded 19401992
Girls / boys 11 / 13,7215,129 / 2,092

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 Scots alive today are over 57; half the Scouts are over 8. That is 49 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 Scot Scout
England and Wales 92351
Scotland 29811

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: Scot and Scout.