Humanverse

Norma vs Norton

American parents have registered 279,349 Normas since 1880, against 2,310 Nortons. Norma is still ahead, with 95 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Norma against Norton, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Norma Norton

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

Norma 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 1885, when Norma had 51 and Norton had 8.

Side by side

  Norma Norton
Total US births 279,3492,310
Most in one year 8,79674
Babies in 2025 95under 5
Estimated living today 110,000510
Median age today 7170
Peak year 19311928
Best rank 22nd girls743rd boys
Rank in 2025 2,002ndunranked
First recorded 18801882
Girls / boys 278,071 / 1,2780 / 2,310

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 Norma Norton
France 82545
England and Wales 3848

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: Norma and Norton.