Venessa vs Venus

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Venessa Venus

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 139 years in which either name was published, Venus for 120 years and Venessa for 19 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

• 1887–1952 Venus ahead
• 1953 Venessa ahead
• 1954–1979 Venus ahead
• 1980–1996 Venessa ahead
• 1997–1998 Venus ahead
• 1999 Venessa ahead
• 2000–2025 Venus ahead

Side by side

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 Venuses alive today are over 47; half the Venessas are over 43. That is 4 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Venessa New Mexico (4.6×), Texas (3.1×), Arizona (2.7×)
• Venus New York (2.8×), California (2.3×), Illinois (2.0×)

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.

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

• Venessa vs Venita
• Venessa vs Venice
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• Venessa vs Ventura
• Venessa vs Vennie
• Venus vs Venita
• Venus vs Venice
• Venus vs Vena