Humanverse

Loretta vs Lorrene

American parents have registered 178,066 Lorettas since 1880, against 556 Lorrenes. Loretta is still ahead, with 485 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Loretta Lorrene

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 1923, when Loretta had 2,143 and Lorrene had 20.

Side by side

  Loretta Lorrene
Total US births 178,066556
Most in one year 3,93120
Babies in 2025 485under 5
Estimated living today 88,000240
Median age today 6869
Peak year 19381923
Best rank 62nd girls1,944th girls
Rank in 2025 606thunranked
First recorded 18801914
Girls / boys 177,564 / 502556 / 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.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Loretta Lorrene
France 31510

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 Lorrene.