Humanverse

Torry vs Tory

American parents have registered 10,916 Torys since 1880, against 1,696 Torrys. Tory is still ahead, with 46 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Torry against Tory, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Torry Tory

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 80 years in which either name was published, Tory for 79 years and Torry for 1 year. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Torry Tory
Total US births 1,69610,916
Most in one year 87466
Babies in 2025 under 546
Estimated living today 1,60010,000
Median age today 4237
Peak year 19761977
Best rank 990th boys478th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked4,249th
First recorded 19461947
Girls / boys 236 / 1,4603,926 / 6,990

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 Torrys alive today are over 42; half the Torys are over 37. That is 5 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 Torry Tory
France 520

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: Torry and Tory.