Humanverse

Wesly vs Westley

American parents have registered 10,184 Westleys since 1880, against 1,439 Weslys. Westley is still ahead, with 462 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Wesly against Westley, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Wesly Westley

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

Westley has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1887 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1929, when Wesly had 12 and Westley had 17.

Side by side

  Wesly Westley
Total US births 1,43910,184
Most in one year 32462
Babies in 2025 13462
Estimated living today 1,2008,900
Median age today 3117
Peak year 20022025
Best rank 2,882nd boys619th boys
Rank in 2025 6,446th619th
First recorded 19151887
Girls / boys 0 / 1,43965 / 10,119

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 Weslys alive today are over 31; half the Westleys are over 17. That is 14 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 Wesly Westley
France 6080

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: Wesly and Westley.