Humanverse

Alice vs Alisha

American parents have registered 590,106 Alices since 1880, against 57,127 Alishas. Alice is still ahead, with 3,547 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Alice Alisha

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 146 years in which either name was published, Alice for 120 years and Alisha for 26 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Alice Alisha
Total US births 590,10657,127
Most in one year 11,9902,457
Babies in 2025 3,547183
Estimated living today 212,00055,000
Median age today 6537
Peak year 19211989
Best rank 15th girls123rd girls
Rank in 2025 65th1,229th
First recorded 18801948
Girls / boys 588,147 / 1,95956,996 / 131

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 Alices alive today are over 65; half the Alishas are over 37. That is 28 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 Alice Alisha
France 210,790480
Italy 99,398372
England and Wales 47,64014,966
Belgium 8,204128
Ireland 4,9951,034
Switzerland 3,6511,052
Scotland 2,964926
Northern Ireland 1,050308
Poland 60139

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: Alice and Alisha.