Steele vs Sterling
American parents have registered 41,197 Sterlings since 1880, against 3,191 Steeles. Sterling is still ahead, with 1,162 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Steele Sterling
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
Sterling 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 2012, when Steele had 97 and Sterling had 415.
Side by side
| Steele | Sterling | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 3,191 | 41,197 |
| Most in one year | 184 | 1,162 |
| Babies in 2025 | 184 | 1,162 |
| Estimated living today | 3,000 | 31,000 |
| Median age today | 11 | 25 |
| Peak year | 2025 | 2025 |
| Best rank | 1,183rd boys | 345th boys |
| Rank in 2025 | 1,183rd | 345th |
| First recorded | 1920 | 1880 |
| Girls / boys | 138 / 3,053 | 3,723 / 37,474 |
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 Sterlings alive today are over 25; half the Steeles are over 11. That is 14 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Steele Utah (8.1×), Arizona (4.9×), Florida (3.4×)
- Sterling Utah (4.2×), Louisiana (2.2×), Virginia (2.0×)
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 | Steele | Sterling |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 13 | 288 |
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: Steele and Sterling.