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Oriana vs Orion

American parents have registered 23,750 Orions since 1880, against 3,883 Orianas. Orion is still ahead, with 1,030 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Oriana against Orion, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Oriana Orion

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 128 years in which either name was published, Orion for 127 years and Oriana for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Oriana Orion
Total US births 3,88323,750
Most in one year 1501,186
Babies in 2025 1131,030
Estimated living today 3,80023,000
Median age today 1910
Peak year 20032018
Best rank 1,348th girls300th boys
Rank in 2025 1,777th334th
First recorded 19661880
Girls / boys 3,883 / 0630 / 23,120

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 Orianas alive today are over 19; half the Orions are over 10. 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 Oriana Orion
France 1,615765
England and Wales 6201,241
Poland 45425
Belgium 23790
Switzerland 19580
Scotland 2625
Ireland 2519

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: Oriana and Orion.