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Allanah vs Ally

American parents have registered 10,247 Allys since 1880, against 924 Allanahs. Ally is still ahead, with 88 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Allanah against Ally, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Allanah Ally

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

Ally has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1985 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1990, when Allanah had 24 and Ally had 62.

Side by side

  Allanah Ally
Total US births 92410,247
Most in one year 63636
Babies in 2025 788
Estimated living today 92010,000
Median age today 1818
Peak year 20061998
Best rank 2,778th girls417th girls
Rank in 2025 11,932nd2,117th
First recorded 19901985
Girls / boys 924 / 010,230 / 17

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.

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 Ally
England and Wales 298320
Ireland 47358
Scotland 90174

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 Ally.