Humanverse

Delia vs Delores

American parents have registered 118,251 Deloreses since 1880, against 37,380 Delias. But in 2025 it was Delia that was commoner, 135 babies to 21.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Delia 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 146 years in which either name was published, Delia for 90 years and Delores for 56 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Delia Delores
Total US births 37,380118,251
Most in one year 4904,171
Babies in 2025 13521
Estimated living today 22,00053,000
Median age today 5175
Peak year 19571932
Best rank 423rd girls56th girls
Rank in 2025 1,561st5,722nd
First recorded 18801890
Girls / boys 37,318 / 62117,821 / 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 Delias are over 51. That is 24 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

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

Country Delia Delores
England and Wales 62212

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: Delia and Delores.