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Theodoros vs Therese

American parents have registered 35,595 Thereses since 1880, against 557 Theodoroses. Therese is still ahead, with 79 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Theodoros Therese

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

Therese 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 2021, when Theodoros had 22 and Therese had 53.

Side by side

  Theodoros Therese
Total US births 55735,595
Most in one year 291,211
Babies in 2025 2979
Estimated living today 54023,000
Median age today 1764
Peak year 20241959
Best rank 3,793rd boys252nd girls
Rank in 2025 3,757th2,298th
First recorded 19671880
Girls / boys 0 / 55735,590 / 5

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 Thereses alive today are over 64; half the Theodoroses are over 17. That is 47 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 Theodoros Therese
England and Wales 195113

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: Theodoros and Therese.