Humanverse

Sire vs Sirius

American parents have registered 1,715 Sires since 1880, against 729 Siriuses. Sire is still ahead, with 121 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sire against Sirius, 1880 to 2025 0 40 80 120 160 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sire Sirius

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 27 years in which either name was published, Sire for 23 years and Sirius for 4 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Sire Sirius
Total US births 1,715729
Most in one year 15961
Babies in 2025 12133
Estimated living today 1,700720
Median age today 67
Peak year 20222022
Best rank 1,237th boys2,325th boys
Rank in 2025 1,466th3,450th
First recorded 19981999
Girls / boys 0 / 1,7155 / 724

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.

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 Sire Sirius
France 110 Siré380
England and Wales 4041

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: Sire and Sirius.