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Valentino vs Valerie

American parents have registered 273,922 Valeries since 1880, against 11,784 Valentinos. Valerie is still ahead, with 2,221 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Valentino against Valerie, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Valentino Valerie

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

Valerie has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1884 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1927, when Valentino had 90 and Valerie had 195.

Side by side

  Valentino Valerie
Total US births 11,784273,922
Most in one year 7107,318
Babies in 2025 7102,221
Estimated living today 11,000241,000
Median age today 1050
Peak year 20251959
Best rank 444th boys60th girls
Rank in 2025 444th127th
First recorded 19101884
Girls / boys 0 / 11,784273,229 / 693

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 Valeries alive today are over 50; half the Valentinos are over 10. That is 40 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 Valentino Valerie
France 2,040253,350 Valérie
Ireland 123,313
Belgium 8871,160
England and Wales 924787
Switzerland 738956
Scotland 15542
Poland 13317

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: Valentino and Valerie.