Humanverse

Thais vs Thayer

American parents have registered 2,225 Thaises since 1880, against 1,437 Thayers. Thais is still ahead, with 26 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Thais against Thayer, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Thais Thayer

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 117 years in which either name was published, Thais for 95 years and Thayer for 22 years. The lead changed hands 20 times.

10 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Thais Thayer
Total US births 2,2251,437
Most in one year 8452
Babies in 2025 2615
Estimated living today 1,6001,100
Median age today 2518
Peak year 20012014
Best rank 2,013th girls2,429th boys
Rank in 2025 4,987th5,861st
First recorded 19091912
Girls / boys 2,225 / 079 / 1,358

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 Thaises alive today are over 25; half the Thayers are over 18. That is 7 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 Thais Thayer
England and Wales 843

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: Thais and Thayer.