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Doris vs Dorothee

American parents have registered 465,789 Dorises since 1880, against 295 Dorothees. Doris is still ahead, with 58 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Doris against Dorothee, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Doris Dorothee

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

Doris 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 2021, when Doris had 74 and Dorothee had 6.

Side by side

  Doris Dorothee
Total US births 465,789295
Most in one year 16,67926
Babies in 2025 58under 5
Estimated living today 127,00020
Median age today 7683
Peak year 19281921
Best rank 7th girls1,668th girls
Rank in 2025 2,895thunranked
First recorded 18801906
Girls / boys 462,548 / 3,241295 / 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 Dorothees alive today are over 83; half the Dorises are over 76. That is 7 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 Doris Dorothee
France 5,68519,640

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: Doris and Dorothee.