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Dela vs Delores

American parents have registered 118,251 Deloreses since 1880, against 565 Delas. Delores is still ahead, with 21 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dela against Delores, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dela Delores

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

Of the 133 years in which either name was published, Delores for 131 years and Dela for 2 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Dela Delores
Total US births 565118,251
Most in one year 194,171
Babies in 2025 1921
Estimated living today 37053,000
Median age today 3675
Peak year 20251932
Best rank 6,116th girls56th girls
Rank in 2025 6,116th5,722nd
First recorded 18881890
Girls / boys 560 / 5117,821 / 430

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 Deloreses alive today are over 75; half the Delas are over 36. That is 39 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 Dela Delores
England and Wales 4212

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: Dela and Delores.