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Tonia vs Tony

American parents have registered 254,483 Tonys since 1880, against 22,247 Tonias. Tony is still ahead, with 325 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Tonia against Tony, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Tonia Tony

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

Tony 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 1974, when Tonia had 1,179 and Tony had 3,280.

Side by side

  Tonia Tony
Total US births 22,247254,483
Most in one year 1,4318,368
Babies in 2025 5325
Estimated living today 20,000186,000
Median age today 5456
Peak year 19701961
Best rank 219th girls53rd boys
Rank in 2025 14,942nd783rd
First recorded 19171880
Girls / boys 22,194 / 532,888 / 251,595

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 Tonys alive today are over 56; half the Tonias are over 54. That is 2 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 Tonia Tony
France 24052,240
England and Wales 462,327
Italy 651505
Ireland 17797
Scotland 3663

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: Tonia and Tony.