Humanverse

Klara vs Klarissa

American parents have registered 3,087 Klaras since 1880, against 2,877 Klarissas. Klara is still ahead, with 112 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Klara against Klarissa, 1880 to 2025 0 40 80 120 160 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Klara Klarissa

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 85 years in which either name was published, Klara for 53 years and Klarissa for 32 years. The lead changed hands 14 times.

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

Side by side

  Klara Klarissa
Total US births 3,0872,877
Most in one year 152121
Babies in 2025 11220
Estimated living today 2,9002,800
Median age today 1222
Peak year 20191998
Best rank 1,452nd girls1,416th girls
Rank in 2025 1,796th5,917th
First recorded 18841968
Girls / boys 3,087 / 02,877 / 0

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 Klarissas alive today are over 22; half the Klaras are over 12. That is 10 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 Klara Klarissa
France 2,14520
England and Wales 1,5069
Switzerland 59015

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: Klara and Klarissa.