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Glena vs Glenn

American parents have registered 250,778 Glenns since 1880, against 1,078 Glenas. Glenn is still ahead, with 124 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Glena against Glenn, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Glena Glenn

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

Glenn 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 1898, when Glena had 5 and Glenn had 190.

Side by side

  Glena Glenn
Total US births 1,078250,778
Most in one year 317,389
Babies in 2025 under 5124
Estimated living today 470135,000
Median age today 7064
Peak year 19501962
Best rank 1,679th girls55th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,443rd
First recorded 18981880
Girls / boys 1,078 / 02,136 / 248,642

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 Glenas alive today are over 70; half the Glenns are over 64. That is 6 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 Glena Glenn
England and Wales 10521

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: Glena and Glenn.