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Deborah vs Deborrah

American parents have registered 744,478 Deborahs since 1880, against 942 Deborrahs. Deborah is still ahead, with 313 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Deborah against Deborrah, 1880 to 2025 0 15k 30k 45k 60k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Deborah Deborrah

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

Deborah 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 1948, when Deborah had 11,270 and Deborrah had 28.

Side by side

  Deborah Deborrah
Total US births 744,478942
Most in one year 54,75499
Babies in 2025 313under 5
Estimated living today 610,000750
Median age today 6870
Peak year 19541953
Best rank 3rd girls948th girls
Rank in 2025 862ndunranked
First recorded 18801948
Girls / boys 742,820 / 1,658942 / 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 Deborrahs alive today are over 70; half the Deborahs are over 68. That is 2 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 Deborah Deborrah
France 30,93060
Ireland 4,85296

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: Deborah and Deborrah.