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Mordechai vs Morris

American parents have registered 71,483 Morrises since 1880, against 6,821 Mordechais. But in 2025 it was Mordechai that was commoner, 238 babies to 92.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Mordechai against Morris, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Mordechai Morris

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 146 years in which either name was published, Morris for 117 years and Mordechai for 29 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Mordechai Morris
Total US births 6,82171,483
Most in one year 3151,690
Babies in 2025 23892
Estimated living today 6,70024,000
Median age today 1464
Peak year 20181918
Best rank 748th boys101st boys
Rank in 2025 965th1,753rd
First recorded 19501880
Girls / boys 0 / 6,821483 / 71,000

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 Morrises alive today are over 64; half the Mordechais are over 14. That is 50 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 Mordechai Morris
Belgium 13881
England and Wales 354389
Switzerland 19413

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: Mordechai and Morris.