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Celeste vs Celestia

American parents have registered 65,678 Celestes since 1880, against 1,414 Celestias. Celeste is still ahead, with 1,662 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Celeste Celestia

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Celeste for 145 years and Celestia for 1 year. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Celeste Celestia
Total US births 65,6781,414
Most in one year 1,66242
Babies in 2025 1,66242
Estimated living today 58,000780
Median age today 2920
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 188th girls3,577th girls
Rank in 2025 188th3,577th
First recorded 18811880
Girls / boys 65,621 / 571,414 / 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 Celestes alive today are over 29; half the Celestias are over 20. That is 9 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 Celeste Celestia
France 15,070 Céleste10 Célestia
England and Wales 1,34024

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: Celeste and Celestia.