Humanverse

Persephone vs Perseus

American parents have registered 4,960 Persephones since 1880, against 1,422 Perseuses. Persephone is still ahead, with 372 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Persephone against Perseus, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Persephone Perseus

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

Of the 60 years in which either name was published, Persephone for 59 years and Perseus for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Persephone Perseus
Total US births 4,9601,422
Most in one year 429168
Babies in 2025 372168
Estimated living today 4,9001,400
Median age today 65
Peak year 20222025
Best rank 681st girls1,204th boys
Rank in 2025 734th1,204th
First recorded 19621983
Girls / boys 4,960 / 032 / 1,390

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 Persephone Perseus
England and Wales 863108

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: Persephone and Perseus.