Humanverse

Steve vs Stevey

American parents have registered 242,131 Steves since 1880, against 158 Steveys. Steve is still ahead, with 105 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Steve against Stevey, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Steve Stevey

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

Steve 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 2021, when Steve had 135 and Stevey had 6.

Side by side

  Steve Stevey
Total US births 242,131158
Most in one year 11,09512
Babies in 2025 105under 5
Estimated living today 157,000150
Median age today 6432
Peak year 19592006
Best rank 41st boys9,286th girls
Rank in 2025 1,609thunranked
First recorded 18801963
Girls / boys 907 / 241,224135 / 23

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 Steves alive today are over 64; half the Steveys are over 32. That is 32 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Steve Stevey
England and Wales 4563

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: Steve and Stevey.