Erna vs Ernst

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Erna Ernst

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 139 years in which either name was published, Erna for 94 years and Ernst for 45 years. The lead changed hands 18 times.

• 1886–1958 Erna ahead
• 1962–1999 Ernst ahead, apart from one short spell
• 2000–2010 Erna ahead
• 2013–2016 Ernst ahead

14 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

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 Ernas alive today are over 74; half the Ernsts are over 54. That is 20 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Erna North Dakota (17.6×), South Dakota (7.6×), Wisconsin (6.4×)
• Ernst Wisconsin (14.4×), New York (4.0×), Missouri (3.1×)

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.

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

• Erna vs Ernest
• Erna vs Ernesto
• Erna vs Ernestine
• Erna vs Ernie
• Erna vs Ernestina
• Ernst vs Ernest
• Ernst vs Ernesto
• Ernst vs Ernestine