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Celene vs Celeste

American parents have registered 65,678 Celestes since 1880, against 1,758 Celenes. Celeste is still ahead, with 1,662 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Celene 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 1993, when Celene had 102 and Celeste had 733.

Side by side

  Celene Celeste
Total US births 1,75865,678
Most in one year 1021,662
Babies in 2025 191,662
Estimated living today 1,60058,000
Median age today 3229
Peak year 19932025
Best rank 1,529th girls188th girls
Rank in 2025 6,116th188th
First recorded 19171881
Girls / boys 1,758 / 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 Celenes alive today are over 32; half the Celestes are over 29. That is 3 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 Celene Celeste
France 375 Célène15,070 Céleste
England and Wales 61,340
Ireland 5225

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: Celene and Celeste.