Humanverse

Zac vs Zack

American parents have registered 9,012 Zacks since 1880, against 1,600 Zacs. Zack is still ahead, with 126 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Zac against Zack, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Zac Zack

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

Zack 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 2014, when Zac had 84 and Zack had 138.

Side by side

  Zac Zack
Total US births 1,6009,012
Most in one year 84237
Babies in 2025 37126
Estimated living today 1,6006,800
Median age today 1320
Peak year 20142008
Best rank 1,781st boys886th boys
Rank in 2025 3,181st1,425th
First recorded 19571880
Girls / boys 0 / 1,6000 / 9,012

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 Zacks alive today are over 20; half the Zacs are over 13. That is 7 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 Zac Zack
England and Wales 7,3597,209
France 2502,665
Scotland 1,149871
Ireland 513803
Northern Ireland 398327
Switzerland 41128
Belgium 6131
Poland 326

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: Zac and Zack.