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Minette vs Minna

American parents have registered 3,151 Minnas since 1880, against 732 Minettes. Minna is still ahead, with 29 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Minette Minna

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, Minna for 125 years and Minette for 21 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.

Side by side

  Minette Minna
Total US births 7323,151
Most in one year 2054
Babies in 2025 under 529
Estimated living today 4301,400
Median age today 5726
Peak year 19681916
Best rank 2,874th girls928th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked4,661st
First recorded 18931880
Girls / boys 732 / 03,151 / 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 Minettes alive today are over 57; half the Minnas are over 26. That is 31 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Minette Minna
France 5305
England and Wales 15209

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: Minette and Minna.