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Stephany vs Steven

American parents have registered 1,297,590 Stevens since 1880, against 15,176 Stephanys. Steven is still ahead, with 1,261 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Stephany against Steven, 1880 to 2025 0 10k 20k 30k 40k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Stephany Steven

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

Steven 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 1916, when Stephany had 40 and Steven had 367.

Side by side

  Stephany Steven
Total US births 15,1761,297,590
Most in one year 56438,491
Babies in 2025 581,261
Estimated living today 14,0001.1 million
Median age today 3155
Peak year 19901956
Best rank 442nd girls10th boys
Rank in 2025 2,895th271st
First recorded 19101880
Girls / boys 15,171 / 54,466 / 1,293,124

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 Stevens alive today are over 55; half the Stephanys are over 31. That is 24 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 Stephany Steven
France 48033,485
England and Wales 757,001

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: Stephany and Steven.