Humanverse

Claire vs Claris

American parents have registered 214,123 Claires since 1880, against 1,067 Clarises. Claire is still ahead, with 3,487 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Claire against Claris, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Claire Claris

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

Claire 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 1902, when Claire had 163 and Claris had 7.

Side by side

  Claire Claris
Total US births 214,1231,067
Most in one year 5,21645
Babies in 2025 3,4875
Estimated living today 169,000210
Median age today 1981
Peak year 20161918
Best rank 40th girls1,214th girls
Rank in 2025 68th14,942nd
First recorded 18801899
Girls / boys 211,919 / 2,204990 / 77

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 Clarises alive today are over 81; half the Claires are over 19. That is 62 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Claire Claris
France 160,38065
England and Wales 3,1424

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: Claire and Claris.