Humanverse

Aleta vs Alexandra

American parents have registered 246,320 Alexandras since 1880, against 6,446 Aletas. Alexandra is still ahead, with 1,314 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Aleta against Alexandra, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Aleta Alexandra

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

Of the 132 years in which either name was published, Alexandra for 102 years and Aleta for 30 years. The lead changed hands 27 times.

21 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Aleta Alexandra
Total US births 6,446246,320
Most in one year 26210,720
Babies in 2025 51,314
Estimated living today 4,500240,000
Median age today 6328
Peak year 19471993
Best rank 511th girls28th girls
Rank in 2025 14,942nd237th
First recorded 18921894
Girls / boys 6,446 / 0245,451 / 869

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 Aletas alive today are over 63; half the Alexandras are over 28. That is 35 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 Aleta Alexandra
England and Wales 319,657

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: Aleta and Alexandra.