Humanverse

Vera vs Verity

American parents have registered 149,854 Veras since 1880, against 1,852 Veritys. Vera is still ahead, with 1,482 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Vera against Verity, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Vera Verity

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

Vera 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 2007, when Vera had 208 and Verity had 41.

Side by side

  Vera Verity
Total US births 149,8541,852
Most in one year 3,934145
Babies in 2025 1,482145
Estimated living today 49,0001,800
Median age today 607
Peak year 19182025
Best rank 68th girls1,478th girls
Rank in 2025 205th1,478th
First recorded 18801966
Girls / boys 149,456 / 3981,852 / 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 Veras alive today are over 60; half the Veritys are over 7. That is 53 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 Vera Verity
England and Wales 7183,529
France 1,6355
Scotland 33194
Ireland 1493
Northern Ireland 33

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: Vera and Verity.