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Dora vs Dorien

American parents have registered 106,480 Doras since 1880, against 1,276 Doriens. Dora is still ahead, with 75 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Dora against Dorien, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Dora Dorien

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

Dora 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 2000, when Dora had 128 and Dorien had 103.

Side by side

  Dora Dorien
Total US births 106,4801,276
Most in one year 2,031108
Babies in 2025 757
Estimated living today 33,0001,200
Median age today 6522
Peak year 19212000
Best rank 130th girls1,267th boys
Rank in 2025 2,387th9,714th
First recorded 18801941
Girls / boys 105,930 / 55069 / 1,207

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 Doras alive today are over 65; half the Doriens are over 22. That is 43 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 Dora Dorien
France 2,13010
Belgium 225636

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: Dora and Dorien.