Modesta
1,615 US births on record
Modesta in the United States
Between 2002 and 2024 the name has been steady.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Modesta in New Zealand
Modesta never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
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
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1890 | #1,338 | 5 |
| 1900 | below floor | — |
| 1910 | #1,634 | 9 |
| 1920 | #1,584 | 27 |
| 1930 | #1,499 | 27 |
| 1940 | #1,477 | 27 |
| 1950 | #2,781 | 14 |
| 1960 | #2,573 | 22 |
| 1970 | #4,038 | 14 |
| 1980 | #7,418 | 8 |
| 1990 | #11,409 | 6 |
| 2000 | #10,745 | 8 |
| 2010 | below floor | — |
| 2020 | below floor | — |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Modesta most often since 1890. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| Texas | 588 |
| California | 22 |
| New Mexico | 13 |
| New York | 11 |
How these figures are worked out
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Each country hides small numbers — the US below 5 births a year, New Zealand below 10. A gap in a line is "below the floor", never "nobody".
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026