Ernie
#5,208 in the US in 2025
Ernie in the United States
Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been falling — down 29% as a share of boys' births.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Ernie in New Zealand
Ernie never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1880 | #809 | 6 |
| 1890 | #667 | 9 |
| 1900 | #743 | 12 |
| 1910 | #677 | 19 |
| 1920 | #744 | 77 |
| 1930 | #591 | 104 |
| 1940 | #442 | 172 |
| 1950 | #383 | 305 |
| 1960 | #378 | 435 |
| 1970 | #556 | 212 |
| 1980 | #786 | 124 |
| 1990 | #1,058 | 100 |
| 2000 | #1,725 | 65 |
| 2010 | #3,812 | 27 |
| 2020 | #4,020 | 25 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Ernie most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| California | 3,584 |
| Texas | 873 |
| Ohio | 736 |
| Kentucky | 707 |
| Illinois | 556 |
| New York | 477 |
| Arizona | 452 |
| Michigan | 421 |
| New Mexico | 342 |
| Indiana | 315 |
How these figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- Each country hides small numbers — the US below 5 births a year, New Zealand below 10. A gap in a line is "below the floor", never "nobody".
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026