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Thompson vs Thorin

American parents have registered 2,748 Thompsons since 1880, against 2,301 Thorins. But in 2025 it was Thorin that was commoner, 134 babies to 64.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Thompson against Thorin, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Thompson Thorin

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 128 years in which either name was published, Thompson for 108 years and Thorin for 20 years. The lead changed hands 13 times.

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

Side by side

  Thompson Thorin
Total US births 2,7482,301
Most in one year 76167
Babies in 2025 64134
Estimated living today 1,9002,300
Median age today 218
Peak year 20182023
Best rank 1,937th boys1,197th boys
Rank in 2025 2,332nd1,376th
First recorded 18821968
Girls / boys 23 / 2,7250 / 2,301

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 Thompsons alive today are over 21; half the Thorins are over 8. That is 13 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 Thompson Thorin
England and Wales 12137

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: Thompson and Thorin.