Humanverse

Susan vs Suzanne

American parents have registered 1,126,022 Susans since 1880, against 219,801 Suzannes. Susan is still ahead, with 222 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Susan against Suzanne, 1880 to 2025 0 12.5k 25k 37.5k 50k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Susan Suzanne

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

Susan 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 1934, when Susan had 1,501 and Suzanne had 1,340.

Side by side

  Susan Suzanne
Total US births 1,126,022219,801
Most in one year 47,4836,867
Babies in 2025 22275
Estimated living today 875,000169,000
Median age today 6763
Peak year 19551962
Best rank 5th girls65th girls
Rank in 2025 1,085th2,387th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 1,123,481 / 2,541219,309 / 492

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 Susans alive today are over 67; half the Suzannes are over 63. That is 4 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 Susan Suzanne
France 770293,095
New Zealand 12,6864,705
Ireland 8,5974,499
Scotland 6,5673,720
England and Wales 872601
Norway 677297
Belgium 5878
Poland 45105
Northern Ireland 6943

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: Susan and Suzanne.