Humanverse

Signe vs Sigurd

American parents have registered 3,003 Signes since 1880, against 869 Sigurds. But in 2025 it was Sigurd that was commoner, 16 babies to 8.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Signe against Sigurd, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Signe Sigurd

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 141 years in which either name was published, Signe for 132 years and Sigurd for 9 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

Side by side

  Signe Sigurd
Total US births 3,003869
Most in one year 6731
Babies in 2025 816
Estimated living today 1,500290
Median age today 4624
Peak year 19151916
Best rank 802nd girls1,176th boys
Rank in 2025 10,917th5,608th
First recorded 18841890
Girls / boys 3,003 / 00 / 869

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 Signes alive today are over 46; half the Sigurds are over 24. That is 22 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 Signe Sigurd
Norway 5,4237,663
Denmark 10,279330
England and Wales 77

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: Signe and Sigurd.