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Dema vs Demetrius

American parents have registered 37,791 Demetriuses since 1880, against 849 Demas. Demetrius is still ahead, with 164 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dema against Demetrius, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dema Demetrius

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 132 years in which either name was published, Demetrius for 83 years and Dema for 49 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Dema Demetrius
Total US births 84937,791
Most in one year 241,079
Babies in 2025 5164
Estimated living today 33036,000
Median age today 2534
Peak year 19191991
Best rank 1,649th girls259th boys
Rank in 2025 14,942nd1,227th
First recorded 18881912
Girls / boys 849 / 01,727 / 36,064

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 Demetriuses alive today are over 34; half the Demas are over 25. That is 9 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 Dema Demetrius
England and Wales 1175

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: Dema and Demetrius.