Humanverse

Winifred vs Winnifred

American parents have registered 46,200 Winifreds since 1880, against 5,127 Winnifreds. Winifred is still ahead, with 284 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Winifred Winnifred

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

Winifred 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 1991, when Winifred had 18 and Winnifred had 7.

Side by side

  Winifred Winnifred
Total US births 46,2005,127
Most in one year 1,640166
Babies in 2025 28470
Estimated living today 11,0001,300
Median age today 6857
Peak year 19181918
Best rank 144th girls546th girls
Rank in 2025 922nd2,514th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 45,094 / 1,1065,127 / 0

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 Winnifreds are over 57. That is 11 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 Winifred Winnifred
England and Wales 1,231116
Ireland 9693

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: Winifred and Winnifred.