Humanverse

Skylar vs Skyler

American parents have registered 105,716 Skylars since 1880, against 69,539 Skylers. Skylar is still ahead, with 1,931 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Skylar against Skyler, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Skylar Skyler

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 71 years in which either name was published, Skyler for 36 years and Skylar for 35 years. The lead changed hands 11 times.

Side by side

  Skylar Skyler
Total US births 105,71669,539
Most in one year 5,6532,756
Babies in 2025 1,931747
Estimated living today 105,00068,000
Median age today 1321
Peak year 20152002
Best rank 42nd girls222nd boys
Rank in 2025 167th783rd
First recorded 19591954
Girls / boys 87,442 / 18,27427,698 / 41,841

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 Skylers alive today are over 21; half the Skylars are over 13. That is 8 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 Skylar Skyler
England and Wales 3,8271,400
Scotland 288100
Ireland 177149
Northern Ireland 7127
France 3050
Belgium 1046
Poland 43

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: Skylar and Skyler.