Humanverse

Nerine vs Nerissa

American parents have registered 1,977 Nerissas since 1880, against 79 Nerines. Nerissa is still ahead, with 9 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nerine against Nerissa, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nerine Nerissa

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 80 years in which either name was published, Nerissa for 76 years and Nerine for 4 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Nerine Nerissa
Total US births 791,977
Most in one year 4373
Babies in 2025 under 59
Estimated living today 01,900
Median age today 10641
Peak year 19171979
Best rank 1,079th girls1,569th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked10,107th
First recorded 19171915
Girls / boys 79 / 01,977 / 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 Nerines alive today are over 106; half the Nerissas are over 41. That is 65 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 Nerine Nerissa
England and Wales 6110

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: Nerine and Nerissa.