Humanverse

Noreen vs Norita

American parents have registered 20,108 Noreens since 1880, against 799 Noritas. Noreen is still ahead, with 33 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Noreen against Norita, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Noreen Norita

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

Noreen has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1892 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1937, when Noreen had 283 and Norita had 155.

Side by side

  Noreen Norita
Total US births 20,108799
Most in one year 654155
Babies in 2025 33under 5
Estimated living today 14,000410
Median age today 6774
Peak year 19481937
Best rank 299th girls532nd girls
Rank in 2025 4,265thunranked
First recorded 18921918
Girls / boys 20,108 / 0799 / 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 Noritas alive today are over 74; half the Noreens are over 67. That is 7 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 Noreen Norita
Ireland 2,2907

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: Noreen and Norita.