Humanverse

Delores vs Delsa

American parents have registered 118,251 Deloreses since 1880, against 248 Delsas. Delores is still ahead, with 21 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Delores Delsa

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

Delores has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1890 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2017, when Delores had 15 and Delsa had 9.

Side by side

  Delores Delsa
Total US births 118,251248
Most in one year 4,17111
Babies in 2025 215
Estimated living today 53,000130
Median age today 7512
Peak year 19321917
Best rank 56th girls2,693rd girls
Rank in 2025 5,722nd14,942nd
First recorded 18901917
Girls / boys 117,821 / 430248 / 0

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 Delsas are over 12. That is 63 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 Delores Delsa
England and Wales 1225

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: Delores and Delsa.