Humanverse

Serafina vs Serena

American parents have registered 47,466 Serenas since 1880, against 3,712 Serafinas. Serena is still ahead, with 942 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Serafina against Serena, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Serafina Serena

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

Serena 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 1924, when Serafina had 34 and Serena had 35.

Side by side

  Serafina Serena
Total US births 3,71247,466
Most in one year 2451,504
Babies in 2025 245942
Estimated living today 3,20044,000
Median age today 1025
Peak year 20252000
Best rank 1,022nd girls209th girls
Rank in 2025 1,022nd325th
First recorded 19011880
Girls / boys 3,712 / 047,450 / 16

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 Serenas alive today are over 25; half the Serafinas are over 10. That is 15 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 Serafina Serena
France 809,885 Séréna
England and Wales 2643,775
Switzerland 1451,026
Poland 1818

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: Serafina and Serena.