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Perel vs Perry

American parents have registered 79,735 Perrys since 1880, against 898 Perels. Perry is still ahead, with 218 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Perel against Perry, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Perel Perry

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

Perry 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 2025, when Perel had 52 and Perry had 218.

Side by side

  Perel Perry
Total US births 89879,735
Most in one year 522,786
Babies in 2025 52218
Estimated living today 89048,000
Median age today 1161
Peak year 20241959
Best rank 3,081st girls132nd boys
Rank in 2025 3,100th1,370th
First recorded 19841880
Girls / boys 898 / 03,691 / 76,044

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 Perrys alive today are over 61; half the Perels are over 11. That is 50 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 Perel Perry
England and Wales 321,059

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: Perel and Perry.