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How rare is a May birthday?

Every May date, in one table. Find your day and see where it stands.

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Birthday rarity

May 1

1 in 367

U.S. births · 2000–2014

Rarer than 52.9% of other dates

#194 of 366 dates
#1 is most common
11,296 births per occurrence
Average when this date occurs

SSA via FiveThirtyEight · CC BY 4.0
Rank uses all births, including leap-day frequency.

Story 1080 × 1920 · Landscape 1200 × 630

May birthday rankings

How to read this

Rank #1 is most common. “1 in” uses all 62,187,024 birth records; leap day occurs four times in the sample.

BirthdayRank / 3661 in…Births / occurrenceRarer than
May 119436711,29652.9%
May 214536211,45739.5%
May 322737011,20561.9%
May 433638310,81691.8%
May 527237411,07274.2%
May 631338110,88885.5%
May 725537311,11969.6%
May 821836911,24059.5%
May 917236411,37846.8%
May 1017036411,39346.3%
May 1129837910,94681.4%
May 1228437611,01377.5%
May 1334638910,65394.5%
May 1420136811,27054.8%
May 1515636311,43542.5%
May 1610035511,66427.1%
May 1716336311,41844.4%
May 1827737511,05175.6%
May 1928637711,00978.1%
May 2023037011,19262.7%
May 2114336111,47238.9%
May 2212435811,57433.7%
May 236034811,92616.2%
May 2410135611,66127.4%
May 2526737411,09872.9%
May 2635340110,33096.4%
May 2734538910,66094.2%
May 2833838510,78192.3%
May 2928737711,00678.4%
May 3018936711,30351.5%
May 3127937611,03576.2%

May in the birth records

May accounts for 5,195,445 births, or 8.35% of the 62,187,024 records in the SSA 2000–2014 sample. Within this month, May 23 is the most common date, ranked #60 nationally. May 26 has the fewest total records and ranks #353. The table above includes all 31 dates, not just those two extremes.

What makes this month worth a closer look

May contains both fixed calendar dates and a holiday that moves within the month. Memorial Day falls on a Monday, so averaging all May 25 births, for example, does not create a pure “Memorial Day” statistic. The row contains every recorded May 25 in the sample, regardless of its weekday or holiday status.

If you arrived looking for May 14, find its exact row rather than a generic answer about May birthdays. You can compare it directly with May 13 and May 15, then open the calculator from the date link. A one-position difference is a small ordering change, not evidence that two people have meaningfully different levels of personal uniqueness.

Read your row and make a card

Rank #1 is most common across all 366 dates. “1 in” divides all birth records by the records for that specific date; the daily-average column divides by the number of times the date occurred. A higher “rarer than” percentage means more other dates had higher counts. These are different ways of describing the same historical sample, not estimates of everyone alive today.

Select your date in the table to open the birthday calculator. Save a portrait or landscape result, or combine it with your name. The complete methodology and original FiveThirtyEight source stay available for anyone who wants to check the numbers.