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Girls' name · 210,864 recorded births

Stella

#52 in the US in 2025

Where Stella stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#52girls’ names · US 2025

Stella was the 52nd most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 4,136 births.

peak 2018 · 5,164188019532025

Its moment was 2018, when 5,164 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#52US rank, 2025 (girls)
4,136US births in 2025
#38its best US rank, in 2018
2018peak year — 5,164 births
206,906US births since 1880
2,976NZ births since 1900
982E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Stella's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Stella was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Stella in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0250500
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Stella in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Stella in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Stella has been registered 2,976 times since 1900, peaking in 2011 with 106 births. It ranked #84 for girls in 2025 on 45 births.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.0313627
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Stella in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Stella in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Stella was registered 982 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2020 with 159 births. It ranked #333 for girls in 2025 on 130 births.

20200.03059
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Stella in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#60414
1890#56924
1900#681,177
1910#721,319
1920#823,492
1930#1401,570
1940#192962
1950#2261,113
1960#383617
1970#543347
1980#730228
1990#1,046171
2000#656376
2010#853,440
2020#424,667

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Stella most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California15,155
New York13,657
Pennsylvania13,526
Texas11,750
Illinois8,136
Ohio7,223
Michigan6,460
New Jersey5,781
Florida5,477
Massachusetts5,388

Questions about Stella

How popular is the name Stella?

Stella ranked #52 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 4,136 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Stella most popular?

Stella peaked in 2018, when 5,164 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Stella rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Stella has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 2018, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.