Humanverse

Lori vs Lorna

American parents have registered 342,764 Loris since 1880, against 28,557 Lornas. Lori is still ahead, with 118 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lori against Lorna, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lori Lorna

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

Of the 138 years in which either name was published, Lori for 75 years and Lorna for 63 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Lori Lorna
Total US births 342,76428,557
Most in one year 23,947758
Babies in 2025 11856
Estimated living today 306,00017,000
Median age today 5966
Peak year 19631957
Best rank 8th girls332nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,721st2,957th
First recorded 19241885
Girls / boys 341,911 / 85328,535 / 22

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 Lornas alive today are over 66; half the Loris are over 59. That is 7 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 Lori Lorna
Scotland 7563,635
Ireland 283,197
England and Wales 4802,134
France 3901,375
Belgium 19281
Northern Ireland 5136

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: Lori and Lorna.