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Stella vs Stephano

American parents have registered 207,288 Stellas since 1880, against 542 Stephanos. Stella is still ahead, with 4,136 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Stella Stephano

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 1991, when Stella had 151 and Stephano had 17.

Side by side

  Stella Stephano
Total US births 207,288542
Most in one year 5,16422
Babies in 2025 4,13611
Estimated living today 110,000530
Median age today 1122
Peak year 20182000
Best rank 38th girls3,640th boys
Rank in 2025 52nd7,194th
First recorded 18801982
Girls / boys 206,906 / 3820 / 542

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 Stephanos alive today are over 22; half the Stellas are over 11. That is 11 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 Stephano
France 19,215240
England and Wales 3,5424

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 Stephano.