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Terrie vs Terry

American parents have registered 521,478 Terrys since 1880, against 20,068 Terries. Terry is still ahead, with 202 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Terrie against Terry, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Terrie Terry

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

Terry 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 1961, when Terrie had 1,133 and Terry had 17,556.

Side by side

  Terrie Terry
Total US births 20,068521,478
Most in one year 1,13320,939
Babies in 2025 under 5202
Estimated living today 17,000379,000
Median age today 6465
Peak year 19611957
Best rank 274th girls33rd boys
Rank in 2025 unranked1,115th
First recorded 19181880
Girls / boys 19,729 / 33996,955 / 424,523

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.

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 Terrie Terry
France 103,680
England and Wales 421,173
Scotland 17472
Ireland 6313

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: Terrie and Terry.