Humanverse

Starlett vs Starr

American parents have registered 10,167 Starrs since 1880, against 747 Starletts. Starr is still ahead, with 63 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Starlett against Starr, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Starlett Starr

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

Starr has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1914 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1967, when Starlett had 11 and Starr had 49.

Side by side

  Starlett Starr
Total US births 74710,167
Most in one year 26307
Babies in 2025 663
Estimated living today 6809,200
Median age today 4436
Peak year 19811997
Best rank 3,253rd girls714th girls
Rank in 2025 13,208th2,719th
First recorded 19421914
Girls / boys 747 / 09,843 / 324

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 Starletts alive today are over 44; half the Starrs are over 36. That is 8 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.

Country Starlett Starr
England and Wales 6378

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: Starlett and Starr.