Humanverse

Sofia vs Sophia

American parents have registered 439,619 Sophias since 1880, against 186,931 Sofias. Sophia is still ahead, with 12,572 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Sofia against Sophia, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Sofia Sophia

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

Sophia 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 2024, when Sofia had 8,118 and Sophia had 12,126.

Side by side

  Sofia Sophia
Total US births 186,931439,619
Most in one year 9,71122,354
Babies in 2025 8,26112,572
Estimated living today 183,000418,000
Median age today 1113
Peak year 20152012
Best rank 14th girls1st girls
Rank in 2025 9th5th
First recorded 18811880
Girls / boys 186,744 / 187439,108 / 511

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 Sophias alive today are over 13; half the Sofias are over 11. That is 2 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 Sofia Sophia
Italy 165,73611,427
England and Wales 30,62648,483
France 34,05517,830
Austria 2,50810,898
Switzerland 6,5254,558
Belgium 6,3342,328
Ireland 2,5864,998
Norway 5,1391,605
Scotland 2,1404,211
Poland 4,2391,235
New Zealand 1,0173,289
Northern Ireland 7352,255

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: Sofia and Sophia.