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Gregor vs Greta

American parents have registered 27,791 Gretas since 1880, against 1,213 Gregors. Greta is still ahead, with 291 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Gregor against Greta, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Gregor Greta

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

Greta has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1885 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1921, when Gregor had 15 and Greta had 60.

Side by side

  Gregor Greta
Total US births 1,21327,791
Most in one year 26534
Babies in 2025 9291
Estimated living today 87022,000
Median age today 4228
Peak year 19621967
Best rank 1,546th boys394th girls
Rank in 2025 8,243rd908th
First recorded 18971885
Girls / boys 0 / 1,21327,786 / 5

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 Gregors alive today are over 42; half the Gretas are over 28. That is 14 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 Gregor Greta
Scotland 3,10962
Austria 2,219526
England and Wales 5051,303
Switzerland 181663
France 415355
Poland 5483
Belgium 534
Northern Ireland 33

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: Gregor and Greta.