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Windy vs Winifred

American parents have registered 46,200 Winifreds since 1880, against 4,983 Windys. Winifred is still ahead, with 284 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Windy against Winifred, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Windy Winifred

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, Winifred for 115 years and Windy for 31 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Windy Winifred
Total US births 4,98346,200
Most in one year 3101,640
Babies in 2025 6284
Estimated living today 4,60011,000
Median age today 5068
Peak year 19751918
Best rank 551st girls144th girls
Rank in 2025 13,208th922nd
First recorded 19481880
Girls / boys 4,971 / 1245,094 / 1,106

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 Winifreds alive today are over 68; half the Windys are over 50. That is 18 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 Windy Winifred
France 41025

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: Windy and Winifred.