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Terell vs Terri

American parents have registered 147,027 Terris since 1880, against 2,733 Terells. Terri is still ahead, with 19 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Terell against Terri, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Terell Terri

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

Terri has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1922 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2009, when Terell had 46 and Terri had 50.

Side by side

  Terell Terri
Total US births 2,733147,027
Most in one year 1078,810
Babies in 2025 519
Estimated living today 2,600127,000
Median age today 3262
Peak year 19941959
Best rank 1,078th boys46th girls
Rank in 2025 12,008th6,116th
First recorded 19571922
Girls / boys 38 / 2,695146,113 / 914

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 Terris alive today are over 62; half the Terells are over 32. That is 30 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 Terell Terri
England and Wales 77681
France 1055

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: Terell and Terri.