Nora vs Norma

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Nora Norma

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, Nora for 76 years and Norma for 70 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

• 1880–1913 Nora ahead
• 1914–1983 Norma ahead
• 1984–2025 Nora ahead

Side by side

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 Normas alive today are over 71; half the Noras are over 11. That is 60 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Nora Kentucky (1.5×), Minnesota (1.5×), New Hampshire (1.4×)
• Norma West Virginia (2.3×), Oklahoma (2.2×), Nebraska (2.0×)

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.

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

• Nora vs Norman
• Nora vs Norah
• Nora vs Norbert
• Nora vs Noreen
• Nora vs Norris
• Norma vs Norman
• Norma vs Norah
• Norma vs Norbert