Humanverse

Valerie vs Valorie

American parents have registered 273,922 Valeries since 1880, against 7,556 Valories. Valerie is still ahead, with 2,221 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Valerie against Valorie, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Valerie Valorie

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

Valerie has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1884 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1950, when Valerie had 3,035 and Valorie had 213.

Side by side

  Valerie Valorie
Total US births 273,9227,556
Most in one year 7,318266
Babies in 2025 2,22139
Estimated living today 241,0006,400
Median age today 5060
Peak year 19591958
Best rank 60th girls610th girls
Rank in 2025 127th3,780th
First recorded 18841916
Girls / boys 273,229 / 6937,556 / 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 Valories alive today are over 60; half the Valeries are over 50. That is 10 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 Valerie Valorie
France 253,350 Valérie5

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: Valerie and Valorie.