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Noreen vs Norman

American parents have registered 254,762 Normans since 1880, against 20,108 Noreens. Norman is still ahead, with 169 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Noreen against Norman, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Noreen Norman

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

Norman 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 1964, when Noreen had 508 and Norman had 2,272.

Side by side

  Noreen Norman
Total US births 20,108254,762
Most in one year 6545,637
Babies in 2025 33169
Estimated living today 14,00090,000
Median age today 6767
Peak year 19481928
Best rank 299th girls39th boys
Rank in 2025 4,265th1,196th
First recorded 18921880
Girls / boys 20,108 / 01,602 / 253,160

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.

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 Norman
Ireland 2,290343
France 4651,720
Scotland 64424
England and Wales 214189

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 Norman.