Humanverse

Verena vs Vernon

American parents have registered 148,389 Vernons since 1880, against 1,989 Verenas. Vernon is still ahead, with 133 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Verena against Vernon, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Verena Vernon

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

Vernon 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 2020, when Verena had 29 and Vernon had 80.

Side by side

  Verena Vernon
Total US births 1,989148,389
Most in one year 433,199
Babies in 2025 40133
Estimated living today 1,10056,000
Median age today 2564
Peak year 19161920
Best rank 1,059th girls65th boys
Rank in 2025 3,712th1,382nd
First recorded 18901880
Girls / boys 1,989 / 01,976 / 146,413

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 Vernons alive today are over 64; half the Verenas are over 25. That is 39 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 Verena Vernon
France 30020
England and Wales 24102

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: Verena and Vernon.