Humanverse

Teresa vs Terese

American parents have registered 417,209 Teresas since 1880, against 6,503 Tereses. Teresa is still ahead, with 291 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Teresa against Terese, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Teresa Terese

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

Teresa 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 1907, when Teresa had 191 and Terese had 9.

Side by side

  Teresa Terese
Total US births 417,2096,503
Most in one year 18,949268
Babies in 2025 291under 5
Estimated living today 341,0005,100
Median age today 6263
Peak year 19611957
Best rank 18th girls589th girls
Rank in 2025 908thunranked
First recorded 18801889
Girls / boys 416,044 / 1,1656,503 / 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.

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 Teresa Terese
Ireland 4,8179
Norway 401670

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: Teresa and Terese.