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Stacey vs Stanley

American parents have registered 302,862 Stanleys since 1880, against 161,732 Staceys. Stanley is still ahead, with 278 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Stacey against Stanley, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Stacey Stanley

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 146 years in which either name was published, Stanley for 110 years and Stacey for 36 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Stacey Stanley
Total US births 161,732302,862
Most in one year 8,0066,472
Babies in 2025 59278
Estimated living today 150,000126,000
Median age today 5166
Peak year 19711954
Best rank 41st girls58th boys
Rank in 2025 3,067th863rd
First recorded 19131880
Girls / boys 147,750 / 13,9821,437 / 301,425

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 Stanleys alive today are over 66; half the Staceys are over 51. That is 15 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 Stacey Stanley
England and Wales 2,68416,890
Scotland 4,838313
France 3653,060
Ireland 1,536129
Belgium 14338
Northern Ireland 9438

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: Stacey and Stanley.