Humanverse

Keren vs Kerrigan

American parents have registered 5,014 Kerens since 1880, against 2,571 Kerrigans. Keren is still ahead, with 66 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Keren against Kerrigan, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Keren Kerrigan

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 83 years in which either name was published, Keren for 74 years and Kerrigan for 9 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Keren Kerrigan
Total US births 5,0142,571
Most in one year 189119
Babies in 2025 6636
Estimated living today 4,9002,500
Median age today 1917
Peak year 20192012
Best rank 1,239th girls1,744th girls
Rank in 2025 2,607th4,546th
First recorded 19391972
Girls / boys 5,014 / 02,460 / 111

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 Kerens alive today are over 19; half the Kerrigans are over 17. That is 2 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 Keren Kerrigan
England and Wales 34823

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: Keren and Kerrigan.