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Wali vs Walker

American parents have registered 48,951 Walkers since 1880, against 1,248 Walis. Walker is still ahead, with 4,303 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Wali against Walker, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Wali Walker

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

Walker 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 1975, when Wali had 37 and Walker had 61.

Side by side

  Wali Walker
Total US births 1,24848,951
Most in one year 654,408
Babies in 2025 564,303
Estimated living today 1,20044,000
Median age today 156
Peak year 20162022
Best rank 2,134th boys78th boys
Rank in 2025 2,421st78th
First recorded 19511880
Girls / boys 0 / 1,2481,037 / 47,914

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 Walis alive today are over 15; half the Walkers are over 6. That is 9 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 Wali Walker
England and Wales 295133
France 23025
Scotland 644

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: Wali and Walker.