Humanverse

Verena vs Veronica

American parents have registered 224,609 Veronicas since 1880, against 1,989 Verenas. Veronica is still ahead, with 730 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Verena against Veronica, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Verena Veronica

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

Veronica 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 1890, when Verena had 11 and Veronica had 82.

Side by side

  Verena Veronica
Total US births 1,989224,609
Most in one year 434,407
Babies in 2025 40730
Estimated living today 1,100185,000
Median age today 2544
Peak year 19161980
Best rank 1,059th girls70th girls
Rank in 2025 3,712th427th
First recorded 18901880
Girls / boys 1,989 / 0223,775 / 834

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 Veronicas alive today are over 44; half the Verenas are over 25. That is 19 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 Veronica
Italy 35621,035
England and Wales 241,473
France 3001,120
Switzerland 56300
Belgium 3575

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 Veronica.