Humanverse

Hong vs Honora

American parents have registered 1,721 Honoras since 1880, against 648 Hongs. Honora is still ahead, with 15 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Hong against Honora, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Hong Honora

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 143 years in which either name was published, Honora for 119 years and Hong for 24 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Hong Honora
Total US births 6481,721
Most in one year 6628
Babies in 2025 under 515
Estimated living today 610870
Median age today 3929
Peak year 19821919
Best rank 2,185th girls1,481st girls
Rank in 2025 unranked7,133rd
First recorded 19231880
Girls / boys 450 / 1981,721 / 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 Hongs alive today are over 39; half the Honoras are over 29. That is 10 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 Hong Honora
France 100130
England and Wales 5931

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: Hong and Honora.