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Allanah vs Allison

American parents have registered 322,944 Allisons since 1880, against 924 Allanahs. Allison is still ahead, with 2,570 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Allanah Allison

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

Allison 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 2006, when Allanah had 63 and Allison had 5,570.

Side by side

  Allanah Allison
Total US births 924322,944
Most in one year 638,163
Babies in 2025 72,570
Estimated living today 920311,000
Median age today 1830
Peak year 20061994
Best rank 2,778th girls34th girls
Rank in 2025 11,932nd103rd
First recorded 19901880
Girls / boys 924 / 0319,119 / 3,825

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 Allisons alive today are over 30; half the Allanahs are over 18. That is 12 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 Allanah Allison
Scotland 90777
Ireland 47583
England and Wales 298241

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: Allanah and Allison.