Humanverse

Simcha vs Simeon

American parents have registered 9,487 Simeons since 1880, against 2,236 Simchas. Simeon is still ahead, with 197 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Simcha against Simeon, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Simcha Simeon

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

Simeon 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 2022, when Simcha had 79 and Simeon had 148.

Side by side

  Simcha Simeon
Total US births 2,2369,487
Most in one year 99222
Babies in 2025 99197
Estimated living today 2,2008,000
Median age today 1520
Peak year 20252019
Best rank 1,728th boys961st boys
Rank in 2025 1,728th1,091st
First recorded 19561880
Girls / boys 227 / 2,00925 / 9,462

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 Simeons alive today are over 20; half the Simchas are over 15. That is 5 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 Simcha Simeon
England and Wales 991,202

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: Simcha and Simeon.