Humanverse

Serafin vs Serena

American parents have registered 47,466 Serenas since 1880, against 1,782 Serafins. Serena is still ahead, with 942 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Serafin against Serena, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Serafin Serena

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

Serena 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 1936, when Serafin had 14 and Serena had 28.

Side by side

  Serafin Serena
Total US births 1,78247,466
Most in one year 331,504
Babies in 2025 25942
Estimated living today 1,40044,000
Median age today 3325
Peak year 19932000
Best rank 2,295th boys209th girls
Rank in 2025 4,139th325th
First recorded 19151880
Girls / boys 0 / 1,78247,450 / 16

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 Serafins alive today are over 33; half the Serenas are over 25. That is 8 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 Serafin Serena
France 959,885 Séréna
England and Wales 463,775
Poland 19818

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: Serafin and Serena.