Selby vs Selene

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Selby Selene

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 113 years in which either name was published, Selene for 77 years and Selby for 36 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

• 1909–1944 Selby ahead
• 1945–1947 Selene ahead
• 1948 Selby ahead
• 1949 Selene ahead
• 1950 Selby ahead
• 1951–1952 Selene ahead
• 1953 Selby ahead
• 1954 Selene ahead
• 1955 Selby ahead
• 1956–2025 Selene ahead

Side by side

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 Selbys alive today are over 32; half the Selenes are over 15. That is 17 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

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

• Selby vs Selena
• Selby vs Selma
• Selby vs Selina
• Selby vs Selah
• Selby vs Selvin
• Selene vs Selena
• Selene vs Selma
• Selene vs Selina