Humanverse

Porcha vs Porter

American parents have registered 21,801 Porters since 1880, against 865 Porchas. Porter is still ahead, with 599 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Porcha against Porter, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Porcha Porter

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 146 years in which either name was published, Porter for 134 years and Porcha for 12 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Porcha Porter
Total US births 86521,801
Most in one year 88921
Babies in 2025 under 5599
Estimated living today 84018,000
Median age today 3512
Peak year 19902015
Best rank 1,670th girls375th boys
Rank in 2025 unranked560th
First recorded 19771880
Girls / boys 865 / 0993 / 20,808

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 Porchas alive today are over 35; half the Porters are over 12. That is 23 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 Porcha Porter
England and Wales 4996

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: Porcha and Porter.