Trilby vs Tristan

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Trilby Tristan

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 112 years in which either name was published, Tristan for 72 years and Trilby for 40 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

• 1895–1947 Trilby ahead
• 1948 Tristan ahead
• 1949–1951 Trilby ahead
• 1952–1953 Tristan ahead
• 1954–1955 Trilby ahead
• 1956–1957 Tristan ahead
• 1958 Trilby ahead
• 1959–2025 Tristan ahead

Side by side

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 Trilbys alive today are over 66; half the Tristans are over 18. That is 48 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

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

• Trilby vs Trinity
• Trilby vs Trisha
• Trilby vs Tricia
• Trilby vs Trina
• Trilby vs Tristen
• Tristan vs Trinity
• Tristan vs Trisha
• Tristan vs Tricia