Humanverse

Nyra vs Nyree

American parents have registered 2,413 Nyras since 1880, against 1,992 Nyrees. Nyra is still ahead, with 147 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nyra against Nyree, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nyra Nyree

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 77 years in which either name was published, Nyree for 44 years and Nyra for 33 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Nyra Nyree
Total US births 2,4131,992
Most in one year 324157
Babies in 2025 14725
Estimated living today 2,3001,900
Median age today 427
Peak year 20211973
Best rank 850th girls833rd girls
Rank in 2025 1,458th6,546th
First recorded 19141970
Girls / boys 2,413 / 01,743 / 249

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 Nyrees alive today are over 27; half the Nyras are over 4. That is 23 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 Nyra Nyree
England and Wales 446122
Scotland 656

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

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Nyra and Nyree.