Humanverse

Alisa vs Alisha

American parents have registered 57,127 Alishas since 1880, against 34,727 Alisas. Alisha is still ahead, with 183 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Alisa against Alisha, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Alisa 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 81 years in which either name was published, Alisha for 51 years and Alisa for 30 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Alisa Alisha
Total US births 34,72757,127
Most in one year 1,1532,457
Babies in 2025 125183
Estimated living today 33,00055,000
Median age today 4537
Peak year 19701989
Best rank 265th girls123rd girls
Rank in 2025 1,652nd1,229th
First recorded 19451948
Girls / boys 34,705 / 2256,996 / 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 Alisas alive today are over 45; half the Alishas are over 37. That is 8 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 Alisa Alisha
England and Wales 1,35114,966
Switzerland 8781,052
Ireland 1561,034
Italy 775372
Poland 1,07139
Scotland 72926
France 480480
Belgium 370128
Northern Ireland 11308

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: Alisa and Alisha.