Humanverse

Selena vs Selin

American parents have registered 59,944 Selenas since 1880, against 1,042 Selins. Selena is still ahead, with 1,170 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Selena against Selin, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Selena Selin

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

Selena 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 Selena had 1,164 and Selin had 45.

Side by side

  Selena Selin
Total US births 59,9441,042
Most in one year 3,84045
Babies in 2025 1,17037
Estimated living today 57,0001,000
Median age today 2418
Peak year 19952006
Best rank 91st girls3,505th girls
Rank in 2025 268th3,903rd
First recorded 18801981
Girls / boys 59,887 / 571,042 / 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 Selenas alive today are over 24; half the Selins are over 18. That is 6 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 Selena Selin
France 9,6601,740
England and Wales 1,639696
Belgium 1,400903
Italy 999214
Switzerland 538637
Poland 58346
Ireland 2697

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: Selena and Selin.