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Manu vs Manuela

American parents have registered 11,068 Manuelas since 1880, against 706 Manus. Manuela is still ahead, with 68 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Manu against Manuela, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Manu Manuela

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

Manuela 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 2013, when Manu had 21 and Manuela had 57.

Side by side

  Manu Manuela
Total US births 70611,068
Most in one year 27202
Babies in 2025 2368
Estimated living today 6905,900
Median age today 1943
Peak year 20061924
Best rank 3,686th boys488th girls
Rank in 2025 4,396th2,564th
First recorded 19721880
Girls / boys 5 / 70111,033 / 35

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 Manuelas alive today are over 43; half the Manus are over 19. That is 24 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 Manu Manuela
France 5859,560
Belgium 738290
Switzerland 48420
England and Wales 95320

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: Manu and Manuela.