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Stella vs Stephane

American parents have registered 207,288 Stellas since 1880, against 1,830 Stephanes. Stella is still ahead, with 4,136 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Stella Stephane

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 1990, when Stella had 171 and Stephane had 70.

Side by side

  Stella Stephane
Total US births 207,2881,830
Most in one year 5,16470
Babies in 2025 4,136under 5
Estimated living today 110,0001,700
Median age today 1138
Peak year 20181985
Best rank 38th girls2,440th girls
Rank in 2025 52ndunranked
First recorded 18801915
Girls / boys 206,906 / 3821,128 / 702

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 Stephanes alive today are over 38; half the Stellas are over 11. That is 27 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 Stella Stephane
France 19,215310,060 Stéphane
England and Wales 3,54244
Switzerland 2,077143 Stéphane
Belgium 1,764344 Stéphane

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: Stella and Stephane.