Humanverse

Orren vs Orrie

American parents have registered 988 Orries since 1880, against 925 Orrens. But in 2025 it was Orren that was commoner, 7 babies to fewer than five.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Orren against Orrie, 1880 to 2025 0 10 20 30 40 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Orren Orrie

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 126 years in which either name was published, Orrie for 70 years and Orren for 56 years. The lead changed hands 24 times.

14 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Orren Orrie
Total US births 925988
Most in one year 2834
Babies in 2025 7under 5
Estimated living today 440210
Median age today 3068
Peak year 19231918
Best rank 1,385th boys1,539th boys
Rank in 2025 9,714thunranked
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 0 / 925313 / 675

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 Orries alive today are over 68; half the Orrens are over 30. That is 38 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 Orren Orrie
England and Wales 413

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: Orren and Orrie.