Humanverse

Aleksandra vs Alex

American parents have registered 295,991 Alexes since 1880, against 3,110 Aleksandras. Alex is still ahead, with 1,586 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Aleksandra against Alex, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Aleksandra Alex

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

Alex 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 2021, when Aleksandra had 73 and Alex had 2,099.

Side by side

  Aleksandra Alex
Total US births 3,110295,991
Most in one year 1268,064
Babies in 2025 471,586
Estimated living today 3,100253,000
Median age today 1828
Peak year 20081993
Best rank 1,756th girls52nd boys
Rank in 2025 3,296th232nd
First recorded 19651880
Girls / boys 3,110 / 09,822 / 286,169

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 Alexes alive today are over 28; half the Aleksandras are over 18. That is 10 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 Aleksandra Alex
Poland 157,5029,524
England and Wales 1,86836,106
France 58032,600
Italy 50322,451
Ireland 4509,754
Belgium 1603,546
Scotland 1512,856
Norway 1,7861,121
Switzerland 3382,322
Northern Ireland 421,810

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: Aleksandra and Alex.