Humanverse

Perri vs Persephone

American parents have registered 4,960 Persephones since 1880, against 2,562 Perris. Persephone is still ahead, with 372 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Perri against Persephone, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Perri Persephone

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 82 years in which either name was published, Perri for 56 years and Persephone for 26 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Perri Persephone
Total US births 2,5624,960
Most in one year 133429
Babies in 2025 26372
Estimated living today 2,4004,900
Median age today 336
Peak year 19582022
Best rank 947th girls681st girls
Rank in 2025 4,987th734th
First recorded 19421962
Girls / boys 2,448 / 1144,960 / 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 Perris alive today are over 33; half the Persephones are over 6. That is 27 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 Perri Persephone
England and Wales 135863
Scotland 283

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: Perri and Persephone.