Humanverse

Tracy vs Travis

American parents have registered 312,894 Tracys since 1880, against 310,687 Travises. But in 2025 it was Travis that was commoner, 732 babies to 114.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Tracy against Travis, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Tracy Travis

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 145 years in which either name was published, Travis for 97 years and Tracy for 48 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.

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

Side by side

  Tracy Travis
Total US births 312,894310,687
Most in one year 20,24011,575
Babies in 2025 114732
Estimated living today 279,000283,000
Median age today 5538
Peak year 19701989
Best rank 10th girls41st boys
Rank in 2025 2,153rd434th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 251,393 / 61,5012,116 / 308,571

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 Tracys alive today are over 55; half the Travises are over 38. That is 17 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 Tracy Travis
England and Wales 3175,261
France 4,160655
Scotland 3,823445
New Zealand 3,99965
Ireland 2,539189
Belgium 24419

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: Tracy and Travis.