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Wesley vs Weston

American parents have registered 250,969 Wesleys since 1880, against 76,027 Westons. Wesley is still ahead, with 5,679 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Wesley Weston

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 146 years in which either name was published, Wesley for 143 years and Weston for 3 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Wesley Weston
Total US births 250,96976,027
Most in one year 5,6795,490
Babies in 2025 5,6795,490
Estimated living today 195,00073,000
Median age today 328
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 52nd boys55th boys
Rank in 2025 52nd55th
First recorded 18801882
Girls / boys 3,256 / 247,713120 / 75,907

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 Wesleys alive today are over 32; half the Westons are over 8. That is 24 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 Wesley Weston
France 5,78085
England and Wales 2,585179
Ireland 8594
Scotland 1598

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: Wesley and Weston.