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Farrah vs Farrel

American parents have registered 12,163 Farrahs since 1880, against 869 Farrels. Farrah is still ahead, with 168 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Farrah against Farrel, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Farrah Farrel

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 111 years in which either name was published, Farrel for 56 years and Farrah for 55 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Farrah Farrel
Total US births 12,163869
Most in one year 1,51525
Babies in 2025 168under 5
Estimated living today 12,000360
Median age today 2269
Peak year 19771937
Best rank 177th girls1,344th boys
Rank in 2025 1,326thunranked
First recorded 19681913
Girls / boys 12,156 / 738 / 831

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 Farrels alive today are over 69; half the Farrahs are over 22. That is 47 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 Farrah Farrel
England and Wales 1,2653
France 575110

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: Farrah and Farrel.