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Sofiya vs Sophia

American parents have registered 439,619 Sophias since 1880, against 1,195 Sofiyas. Sophia is still ahead, with 12,572 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Sofiya 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 Sofiya had 80 and Sophia had 12,126.

Side by side

  Sofiya Sophia
Total US births 1,195439,619
Most in one year 8022,354
Babies in 2025 5112,572
Estimated living today 1,200418,000
Median age today 1013
Peak year 20242012
Best rank 2,303rd girls1st girls
Rank in 2025 3,130th5th
First recorded 19941880
Girls / boys 1,195 / 0439,108 / 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 Sofiyas are over 10. That is 3 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 Sofiya Sophia
England and Wales 36948,483
France 20017,830
Ireland 34,998
Scotland 34,211
Belgium 442,328
Poland 1501,235

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: Sofiya and Sophia.