Humanverse

Orlo vs Orly

American parents have registered 920 Orlos since 1880, against 824 Orlys. But in 2025 it was Orly that was commoner, 29 babies to fewer than five.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Orlo Orly

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 110 years in which either name was published, Orlo for 57 years and Orly for 53 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Orlo Orly
Total US births 920824
Most in one year 4133
Babies in 2025 under 529
Estimated living today 110810
Median age today 7815
Peak year 19192013
Best rank 1,063rd boys4,336th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked4,661st
First recorded 18811964
Girls / boys 0 / 920824 / 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 Orlos alive today are over 78; half the Orlys are over 15. That is 63 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 Orlo Orly
England and Wales 1791

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: Orlo and Orly.