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Theresa vs Theresia

American parents have registered 405,831 Theresas since 1880, against 2,016 Theresias. Theresa is still ahead, with 136 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Theresa against Theresia, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Theresa Theresia

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

Theresa 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 1882, when Theresa had 170 and Theresia had 13.

Side by side

  Theresa Theresia
Total US births 405,8312,016
Most in one year 11,99158
Babies in 2025 136under 5
Estimated living today 266,0001,000
Median age today 6264
Peak year 19611959
Best rank 35th girls1,407th girls
Rank in 2025 1,548thunranked
First recorded 18801881
Girls / boys 404,613 / 1,2182,016 / 0

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 Theresias alive today are over 64; half the Theresas are over 62. That is 2 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 Theresa Theresia
France 2,285570
England and Wales 6643

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: Theresa and Theresia.