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Orla vs Orlaith

American parents have registered 1,485 Orlas since 1880, against 49 Orlaiths. Orla is still ahead, with 70 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Orla against Orlaith, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Orla Orlaith

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

Orla has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2006, when Orla had 14 and Orlaith had 6.

Side by side

  Orla Orlaith
Total US births 1,48549
Most in one year 7110
Babies in 2025 706
Estimated living today 94050
Median age today 92
Peak year 20242024
Best rank 2,508th girls9,556th girls
Rank in 2025 2,514th13,208th
First recorded 18802006
Girls / boys 1,199 / 28649 / 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 Orlas alive today are over 9; half the Orlaiths are over 2. That is 7 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 Orla Orlaith
England and Wales 11,5201,422
Ireland 9,9482,012
Scotland 2,925548
Northern Ireland 937720

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: Orla and Orlaith.