Humanverse

Petar vs Petra

American parents have registered 14,626 Petras since 1880, against 641 Petars. Petra is still ahead, with 161 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Petar against Petra, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Petar Petra

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

Petra has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1881 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1996, when Petar had 18 and Petra had 85.

Side by side

  Petar Petra
Total US births 64114,626
Most in one year 21205
Babies in 2025 14161
Estimated living today 6209,100
Median age today 2240
Peak year 20061927
Best rank 4,370th boys498th girls
Rank in 2025 6,143rd1,367th
First recorded 19631881
Girls / boys 0 / 64114,559 / 67

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 Petras alive today are over 40; half the Petars are over 22. That is 18 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 Petar Petra
England and Wales 158692
Switzerland 249291
France 55405
Ireland 687

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: Petar and Petra.