Humanverse

My vs Myra

American parents have registered 63,967 Myras since 1880, against 1,340 Mys. Myra is still ahead, with 429 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: My against Myra, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

My Myra

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

Myra 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 1982, when My had 113 and Myra had 337.

Side by side

  My Myra
Total US births 1,34063,967
Most in one year 1131,296
Babies in 2025 7429
Estimated living today 1,30041,000
Median age today 4058
Peak year 19821958
Best rank 1,357th girls236th girls
Rank in 2025 11,932nd662nd
First recorded 19711880
Girls / boys 1,101 / 23963,916 / 51

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 Myras alive today are over 58; half the Mys are over 40. That is 18 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 My Myra
England and Wales 371,284
France 260455

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: My and Myra.