Humanverse

Sebastian vs Sebastien

American parents have registered 218,463 Sebastians since 1880, against 4,057 Sebastiens. Sebastian is still ahead, with 8,615 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sebastian against Sebastien, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sebastian Sebastien

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

Sebastian has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1881 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1984, when Sebastian had 242 and Sebastien had 25.

Side by side

  Sebastian Sebastien
Total US births 218,4634,057
Most in one year 10,325178
Babies in 2025 8,61555
Estimated living today 212,0004,000
Median age today 1117
Peak year 20162007
Best rank 23rd boys1,053rd boys
Rank in 2025 16th2,451st
First recorded 18811971
Girls / boys 408 / 218,0550 / 4,057

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 Sebastiens alive today are over 17; half the Sebastians are over 11. That is 6 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 Sebastian Sebastien
France 2,040304,665 Sébastien
Poland 45,4597 Sébastien
England and Wales 34,0851,147
Belgium 1,2452,605 Sébastien
Switzerland 1,980399 Sébastien
Ireland 1,37525
Scotland 1,13727

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: Sebastian and Sebastien.