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Terrence vs Terrie

American parents have registered 72,939 Terrences since 1880, against 20,068 Terries. Terrence is still ahead, with 107 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Terrence Terrie

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

Of the 132 years in which either name was published, Terrence for 129 years and Terrie for 3 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Terrence Terrie
Total US births 72,93920,068
Most in one year 1,5081,133
Babies in 2025 107under 5
Estimated living today 58,00017,000
Median age today 4964
Peak year 19551961
Best rank 181st boys274th girls
Rank in 2025 1,585thunranked
First recorded 18861918
Girls / boys 527 / 72,41219,729 / 339

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 Terries alive today are over 64; half the Terrences are over 49. That is 15 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 Terrence Terrie
France 29510
England and Wales 25242
Scotland 617
Ireland 66

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: Terrence and Terrie.