Humanverse

Modena vs Modesta

American parents have registered 1,615 Modestas since 1880, against 683 Modenas. Neither name reached five babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Modena against Modesta, 1880 to 2025 0 13 25 38 50 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Modena Modesta

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, Modesta for 95 years and Modena for 16 years. The lead changed hands 11 times.

Side by side

  Modena Modesta
Total US births 6831,615
Most in one year 3341
Babies in 2025 under 5under 5
Estimated living today 100760
Median age today 8260
Peak year 19211926
Best rank 1,409th girls1,198th girls
Rank in 2025 unrankedunranked
First recorded 18821890
Girls / boys 683 / 01,615 / 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 Modenas alive today are over 82; half the Modestas are over 60. That is 22 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 Modena Modesta
France 525

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: Modena and Modesta.