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Stella vs Stevan

American parents have registered 207,288 Stellas since 1880, against 4,129 Stevans. Stella is still ahead, with 4,136 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Stella against Stevan, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Stella Stevan

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

Stella 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 1989, when Stella had 169 and Stevan had 76.

Side by side

  Stella Stevan
Total US births 207,2884,129
Most in one year 5,164125
Babies in 2025 4,13612
Estimated living today 110,0003,300
Median age today 1146
Peak year 20181953
Best rank 38th girls639th boys
Rank in 2025 52nd6,803rd
First recorded 18801924
Girls / boys 206,906 / 3820 / 4,129

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 Stevans alive today are over 46; half the Stellas are over 11. That is 35 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 Stella Stevan
France 19,215925
England and Wales 3,54219
Scotland 5639

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: Stella and Stevan.