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Loreta vs Loretta

American parents have registered 178,066 Lorettas since 1880, against 1,225 Loretas. Loretta is still ahead, with 485 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Loreta against Loretta, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Loreta Loretta

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

Loretta has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2001, when Loreta had 7 and Loretta had 77.

Side by side

  Loreta Loretta
Total US births 1,225178,066
Most in one year 363,931
Babies in 2025 under 5485
Estimated living today 45088,000
Median age today 6868
Peak year 19161938
Best rank 1,189th girls62nd girls
Rank in 2025 unranked606th
First recorded 19001880
Girls / boys 1,225 / 0177,564 / 502

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.

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 Loreta Loretta
England and Wales 30471
France 10315
Poland 23

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: Loreta and Loretta.