Humanverse

Thomas vs Thor

American parents have registered 2,367,087 Thomases since 1880, against 4,857 Thors. Thomas is still ahead, with 6,924 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Thomas Thor

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

Thomas 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 2015, when Thomas had 7,214 and Thor had 118.

Side by side

  Thomas Thor
Total US births 2,367,0874,857
Most in one year 48,725118
Babies in 2025 6,92444
Estimated living today 1.5 million4,200
Median age today 5725
Peak year 19522015
Best rank 8th boys1,438th boys
Rank in 2025 34th2,833rd
First recorded 18801904
Girls / boys 8,511 / 2,358,5760 / 4,857

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 Thomases alive today are over 57; half the Thors are over 25. That is 32 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 Thomas Thor
England and Wales 162,238269
Ireland 36,7443
Norway 25,4787,178
Belgium 16,0371,130
Scotland 16,7854
Denmark 11,565527
Poland 9293

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: Thomas and Thor.