Humanverse

Tom vs Tomasa

American parents have registered 140,370 Toms since 1880, against 3,198 Tomasas. Tom is still ahead, with 65 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Tom against Tomasa, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Tom Tomasa

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

Tom 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 2024, when Tom had 48 and Tomasa had 17.

Side by side

  Tom Tomasa
Total US births 140,3703,198
Most in one year 5,08093
Babies in 2025 658
Estimated living today 66,0001,300
Median age today 6558
Peak year 19591925
Best rank 82nd boys768th girls
Rank in 2025 2,183rd10,917th
First recorded 18801887
Girls / boys 614 / 139,7563,198 / 0

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 Toms alive today are over 65; half the Tomasas are over 58. That is 7 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 Tom Tomasa
France 94,52040

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: Tom and Tomasa.