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Loretta vs Lorina

American parents have registered 178,066 Lorettas since 1880, against 1,817 Lorinas. Loretta is still ahead, with 485 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Loretta Lorina

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 1994, when Loretta had 135 and Lorina had 22.

Side by side

  Loretta Lorina
Total US births 178,0661,817
Most in one year 3,93138
Babies in 2025 4858
Estimated living today 88,0001,200
Median age today 6849
Peak year 19381986
Best rank 62nd girls2,564th girls
Rank in 2025 606th10,917th
First recorded 18801894
Girls / boys 177,564 / 5021,817 / 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 Lorettas alive today are over 68; half the Lorinas are over 49. That is 19 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 Loretta Lorina
France 315425
England and Wales 47121
Ireland 3393

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: Loretta and Lorina.