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Orel vs Oren

American parents have registered 9,547 Orens since 1880, against 698 Orels. Oren is still ahead, with 174 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Orel against Oren, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Orel Oren

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

Oren 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 1916, when Orel had 73 and Oren had 117.

Side by side

  Orel Oren
Total US births 6989,547
Most in one year 73174
Babies in 2025 6174
Estimated living today 2305,400
Median age today 2324
Peak year 19162025
Best rank 1,304th boys1,183rd boys
Rank in 2025 10,695th1,183rd
First recorded 18831880
Girls / boys 136 / 56245 / 9,502

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.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Orel Oren
France 135630
England and Wales 3531

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: Orel and Oren.