Humanverse

Kerissa vs Kerry

American parents have registered 98,644 Kerrys since 1880, against 502 Kerissas. Kerry is still ahead, with 77 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Kerissa against Kerry, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Kerissa Kerry

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

Kerry has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1920 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2008, when Kerissa had 11 and Kerry had 122.

Side by side

  Kerissa Kerry
Total US births 50298,644
Most in one year 293,127
Babies in 2025 under 577
Estimated living today 49083,000
Median age today 3155
Peak year 19941960
Best rank 3,704th girls158th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked2,451st
First recorded 19751920
Girls / boys 502 / 048,675 / 49,969

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 Kerrys alive today are over 55; half the Kerissas are over 31. That is 24 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 Kerissa Kerry
France 5250

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: Kerissa and Kerry.