Thelma vs Theodora
American parents have registered 226,602 Thelmas since 1880, against 12,703 Theodoras. But in 2025 it was Theodora that was commoner, 384 babies to 29.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Thelma Theodora
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 145 years in which either name was published, Thelma for 115 years and Theodora for 30 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.
Side by side
| Thelma | Theodora | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 226,602 | 12,703 |
| Most in one year | 7,871 | 426 |
| Babies in 2025 | 29 | 384 |
| Estimated living today | 41,000 | 7,700 |
| Median age today | 77 | 26 |
| Peak year | 1921 | 2022 |
| Best rank | 30th girls | 688th girls |
| Rank in 2025 | 4,661st | 725th |
| First recorded | 1880 | 1880 |
| Girls / boys | 225,460 / 1,142 | 12,654 / 49 |
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 Thelmas alive today are over 77; half the Theodoras are over 26. That is 51 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Thelma West Virginia (3.1×), Kentucky (2.6×), Arkansas (2.6×)
- Theodora New York (3.2×), New Jersey (2.1×), Pennsylvania (1.9×)
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 | Thelma | Theodora |
|---|---|---|
| France | 3,985 | 1,710 |
| England and Wales | 117 | 1,573 |
| Belgium | 246 | 69 |
| Ireland | 228 | 66 |
| Switzerland | 95 | 89 |
| Scotland | 3 | 43 |
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: Thelma and Theodora.