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Stefania vs Stella

American parents have registered 207,288 Stellas since 1880, against 2,653 Stefanias. Stella is still ahead, with 4,136 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Stefania against Stella, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Stefania Stella

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

Stella 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 1994, when Stefania had 51 and Stella had 131.

Side by side

  Stefania Stella
Total US births 2,653207,288
Most in one year 605,164
Babies in 2025 254,136
Estimated living today 2,200110,000
Median age today 2411
Peak year 20042018
Best rank 2,711th girls38th girls
Rank in 2025 5,099th52nd
First recorded 19011880
Girls / boys 2,653 / 0206,906 / 382

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 Stefanias alive today are over 24; half the Stellas are over 11. That is 13 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 Stefania Stella
Italy 7,65012,439
France 67519,215
Poland 3,3881,089
England and Wales 8173,542
Belgium 1341,764
Ireland 71832
Scotland 22563

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: Stefania and Stella.