Ora
Ora reached its high-water mark in 1919 at number 203, and has been recorded 44,894 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 3,712th. About 8,600 Oras are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 73.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ora boys named Ora
Girls and boys called Ora
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 39,278 girls and 5,616 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 40 to 0.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 123 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 44,894
- Estimated living today
- 8,600
- Median age today
- 73
- Peak year
- 1919
- Best rank
- 203rd
- Rank in 2025
- 3,712th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 39,278 / 5,616
How old the living Oras are
born that year still alive today
Of the 44,894 babies given the name since 1880, about 8,600 are alive — 19 in every hundred. Roughly 590 of them are children and 5,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1952 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Latin
First appeared in the 19th century when similar sounding names like Cora, Dora and Nora were in fashion. Possibly shortened from Aurelia, sometimes spelled Ora Lee, or Aura Lea, in the American civil war song.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Oras
- Ora Namir (1930–2019)Israeli diplomat
People named Ora with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ora is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ora is most concentrated in Mississippi (9.8×), Arkansas (5.7×), Alabama (4.5×), Kentucky (3.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1919
The most popular girls’ names the year Ora peaked:
Ora elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Ora | 390 | 1,063rd |
| England and Wales girls | Ora | 78 | 2,757th |
| Switzerland girls | Ora | 12 | 1,316th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Ora: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Ora | 7 | 0.001% | 1,198th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Ora | 5 | 0.001% | 671st |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Ora among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Ora | 23 | 44 |
| Finland girls | Ora | 6 | 11 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Ora against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.