Humanverse

Korban vs Kory

American parents have registered 15,723 Korys since 1880, against 591 Korbans. Kory is still ahead, with 45 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Korban against Kory, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Korban Kory

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

Kory has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1952 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2017, when Korban had 42 and Kory had 74.

Side by side

  Korban Kory
Total US births 59115,723
Most in one year 42651
Babies in 2025 845
Estimated living today 59015,000
Median age today 1236
Peak year 20171989
Best rank 2,840th boys373rd boys
Rank in 2025 8,910th3,314th
First recorded 19931952
Girls / boys 0 / 5911,338 / 14,385

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 Korys alive today are over 36; half the Korbans are over 12. 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 Korban Kory
England and Wales 105292

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: Korban and Kory.