Humanverse

Manuel vs Manuella

American parents have registered 192,742 Manuels since 1880, against 642 Manuellas. Manuel is still ahead, with 860 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Manuel against Manuella, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Manuel Manuella

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

Manuel 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 2022, when Manuel had 1,070 and Manuella had 22.

Side by side

  Manuel Manuella
Total US births 192,742642
Most in one year 2,66523
Babies in 2025 86017
Estimated living today 134,000470
Median age today 3614
Peak year 20052019
Best rank 153rd boys5,449th girls
Rank in 2025 371st6,546th
First recorded 18801916
Girls / boys 1,158 / 191,584642 / 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 Manuels alive today are over 36; half the Manuellas are over 14. That is 22 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 Manuel Manuella
France 36,7258,545
Belgium 623127
England and Wales 53397

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: Manuel and Manuella.