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Lore vs Lorraine

American parents have registered 210,845 Lorraines since 1880, against 1,118 Lores. Lorraine is still ahead, with 238 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lore against Lorraine, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lore Lorraine

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

Lorraine has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1882 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2024, when Lore had 10 and Lorraine had 157.

Side by side

  Lore Lorraine
Total US births 1,118210,845
Most in one year 566,005
Babies in 2025 under 5238
Estimated living today 86092,000
Median age today 6369
Peak year 19611928
Best rank 1,499th girls39th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked1,043rd
First recorded 19151882
Girls / boys 1,118 / 0209,910 / 935

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 Lorraines alive today are over 69; half the Lores are over 63. That is 6 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 Lore Lorraine
Belgium 6,18081
France 4204,360

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: Lore and Lorraine.