Humanverse

Tristan vs Tristian

American parents have registered 130,794 Tristans since 1880, against 8,601 Tristians. Tristan is still ahead, with 1,125 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Tristan Tristian

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

Tristan has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1946 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Tristan had 1,125 and Tristian had 115.

Side by side

  Tristan Tristian
Total US births 130,7948,601
Most in one year 5,844373
Babies in 2025 1,125115
Estimated living today 128,0008,500
Median age today 1817
Peak year 20082010
Best rank 81st boys665th boys
Rank in 2025 309th1,514th
First recorded 19461977
Girls / boys 6,551 / 124,243641 / 7,960

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.

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 Tristan Tristian
England and Wales 9,33795
Ireland 1,1267

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: Tristan and Tristian.