Selena vs Selina
American parents have registered 59,944 Selenas since 1880, against 19,225 Selinas. Selena is still ahead, with 1,170 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Selena Selina
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 146 years in which either name was published, Selena for 118 years and Selina for 28 years. The lead changed hands 23 times.
- 1889–1901 Selina ahead, apart from one short spell
- 1902–1986 Selena ahead, apart from 4 short spells
- 1987–1990 Selina ahead
- 1991–2025 Selena ahead
15 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Selena | Selina | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 59,944 | 19,225 |
| Most in one year | 3,840 | 704 |
| Babies in 2025 | 1,170 | 176 |
| Estimated living today | 57,000 | 17,000 |
| Median age today | 24 | 32 |
| Peak year | 1995 | 1995 |
| Best rank | 91st girls | 371st girls |
| Rank in 2025 | 268th | 1,272nd |
| First recorded | 1880 | 1880 |
| Girls / boys | 59,887 / 57 | 19,225 / 0 |
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 Selinas alive today are over 32; half the Selenas are over 24. That is 8 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Selena Nevada (2.7×), Arizona (2.3×), New Mexico (2.1×)
- Selina Arizona (2.7×), California (2.3×), Florida (1.9×)
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 | Selena | Selina |
|---|---|---|
| France | 9,660 | 1,025 |
| Switzerland | 538 | 3,684 |
| England and Wales | 1,639 | 1,946 |
| Belgium | 1,400 | 697 |
| Italy | 999 | 614 |
| Ireland | 269 | 378 |
| Poland | 583 | 35 |
| Scotland | 97 | 242 |
| Northern Ireland | 10 | 3 |
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: Selena and Selina.