Humanverse

Moriah vs Morten

American parents have registered 13,507 Moriahs since 1880, against 43 Mortens. Moriah is still ahead, with 221 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Moriah against Morten, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Moriah Morten

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 64 years in which either name was published, Moriah for 57 years and Morten for 7 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Moriah Morten
Total US births 13,50743
Most in one year 5178
Babies in 2025 221under 5
Estimated living today 13,0001
Median age today 2491
Peak year 19921929
Best rank 477th girls2,980th boys
Rank in 2025 1,092ndunranked
First recorded 19681914
Girls / boys 13,399 / 1080 / 43

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 Mortens alive today are over 91; half the Moriahs are over 24. That is 67 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Moriah Morten
England and Wales 18046

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: Moriah and Morten.