Humanverse

Terena vs Terrance

American parents have registered 70,921 Terrances since 1880, against 565 Terenas. Terrance is still ahead, with 109 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Terena against Terrance, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Terena Terrance

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

Terrance has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1895 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1969, when Terena had 36 and Terrance had 1,002.

Side by side

  Terena Terrance
Total US births 56570,921
Most in one year 361,440
Babies in 2025 under 5109
Estimated living today 52060,000
Median age today 5544
Peak year 19691988
Best rank 2,102nd girls193rd boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,564th
First recorded 19531895
Girls / boys 565 / 0751 / 70,170

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 Terenas alive today are over 55; half the Terrances are over 44. That is 11 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 Terena Terrance
England and Wales 350
France 55

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: Terena and Terrance.