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Lara vs Larissa

American parents have registered 30,202 Laras since 1880, against 23,498 Larissas. Lara is still ahead, with 409 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lara Larissa

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 129 years in which either name was published, Lara for 105 years and Larissa for 24 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Lara Larissa
Total US births 30,20223,498
Most in one year 1,360715
Babies in 2025 409126
Estimated living today 28,00023,000
Median age today 4031
Peak year 19691994
Best rank 222nd girls363rd girls
Rank in 2025 691st1,643rd
First recorded 18871946
Girls / boys 30,168 / 3423,498 / 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 Laras alive today are over 40; half the Larissas are over 31. 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 Lara Larissa
England and Wales 13,8801,271
France 12,4601,630
Italy 12,696588
Austria 10,7632,219
Switzerland 8,0792,248
Belgium 5,731888
Poland 2,204158
Scotland 1,690130
Ireland 1,69686
Northern Ireland 67916

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: Lara and Larissa.