Woodrow vs Woody

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Woodrow Woody

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 128 years in which either name was published, Woodrow for 122 years and Woody for 6 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

• 1882–1897 Woody ahead
• 1900–1902 Woodrow ahead
• 1904 Woody ahead
• 1906–2025 Woodrow ahead

Side by side

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 Woodrows alive today are over 64; half the Woodys are over 60. That is 4 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Woodrow South Carolina (5.4×), West Virginia (4.5×), Mississippi (3.6×)
• Woody North Carolina (5.3×), Texas (3.7×), Tennessee (3.2×)

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.

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

• Woodrow vs Woodie
• Woodrow vs Woodson
• Woodrow vs Woodroe
• Woodrow vs Woods
• Woodrow vs Woodford
• Woody vs Woodie
• Woody vs Woodson
• Woody vs Woodroe