One subject, in depth · bridged to FuelFacts
NameCurve
Girls' name · 144,729 recorded births

Sue

#8,860 in the US in 2025

Where Sue stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#8,860girls’ names · US 2025

Sue was the 8,860th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 11 births.

peak 1947 · 5,306188019532025

Its moment was 1947, when 5,306 babies were given it. In 1 of the years between, the name fell under the 5-birth floor and the registrar published nothing — those years are the marks along the base of the chart, not gaps in the name's use.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#8,860US rank, 2025 (girls)
11US births in 2025
#61its best US rank, in 1946
1947peak year — 5,306 births
144,536US births since 1880
193NZ births since 1955
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Sue's figures are worked out

  1. 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. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Sue was under the floor in 1 year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Sue in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0164327
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Sue in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2015 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Sue in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Sue has been registered 193 times since 1955, peaking in 1959 with 22 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.04693
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Sue in New Zealand, 1900–2025

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

Sue in England & Wales

Sue does not appear in the ONS list for England and Wales. That means it was given to fewer than 3 babies in every year from 2019 to 2025 — not that it is unused there. ONS publishes only those seven years, so a name that had its moment in England before 2019 is invisible here however common it once was.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#18665
1890#222120
1900#259157
1910#231277
1920#246707
1930#1671,213
1940#813,104
1950#1003,503
1960#1204,009
1970#367666
1980#543347
1990#1,89274
2000#3,59136
2010#7,21717
2020below floor<5

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Sue 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.

StateBirths
Ohio11,758
Michigan9,453
Illinois8,753
California8,142
Texas7,814
New York7,607
Pennsylvania7,398
Indiana6,758
Kentucky5,120
Wisconsin4,948

Questions about Sue

How popular is the name Sue?

Sue ranked #8,860 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 11 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Sue most popular?

Sue peaked in 1947, when 5,306 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Sue rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Sue has been steady between 2015 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1947, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

See what every site in this family answers

Published by

Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.