Humanverse

Terra

Terra reached its high-water mark in 1980 at number 379, and has been recorded 15,434 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 2,410th. About 15,000 Terras are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 42.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Terra boys named Terra

By the numbers

Total US births
15,434
Estimated living today
15,000
Median age today
42
Peak year
1980
Best rank
379th
Rank in 2025
2,410th
First recorded
1940
Girls / boys
15,429 / 5

How old the living Terras are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 15,434 babies given the name since 1940, about 15,000 are alive — 96 in every hundred. Roughly 1,500 of them are children and 370 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1983 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Notable Terras

People named Terra with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Terra is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Terra is most concentrated in Washington (2.4×), Oregon (2.2×), Oklahoma (2.0×), Arkansas (1.7×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1980

The most popular girls’ names the year Terra peaked:

All the names of 1980

Terra elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales girls Terra 12 5,765th

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Terra among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

Country Spelling First forename Any forename
Finland girls Terra 5 6

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Related names

Terra against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Terra with a name of your own

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.