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Celena vs Celeste

American parents have registered 65,678 Celestes since 1880, against 4,789 Celenas. Celeste is still ahead, with 1,662 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Celena against Celeste, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Celena Celeste

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

Celeste has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1881 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1977, when Celena had 195 and Celeste had 471.

Side by side

  Celena Celeste
Total US births 4,78965,678
Most in one year 2021,662
Babies in 2025 371,662
Estimated living today 4,50058,000
Median age today 3529
Peak year 19952025
Best rank 935th girls188th girls
Rank in 2025 3,903rd188th
First recorded 18901881
Girls / boys 4,789 / 065,621 / 57

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 Celenas alive today are over 35; half the Celestes are over 29. That is 6 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 Celena Celeste
France 1,43515,070 Céleste
Belgium 85 Céléna2,402 Céleste
England and Wales 101,340
Ireland 425

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: Celena and Celeste.