Alva vs Alvina

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Alva Alvina

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, Alva for 125 years and Alvina for 21 years. The lead changed hands 28 times.

• 1880–1990 Alva ahead, apart from 5 short spells
• 1997–1999 Alvina ahead
• 2003–2025 Alva ahead, apart from one short spell

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

Side by side

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 Alvas alive today are over 65; half the Alvinas are over 54. That is 11 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Alva Oklahoma (5.7×), West Virginia (4.6×), Kentucky (3.4×)
• Alvina North Dakota (30.2×), South Dakota (16.6×), Minnesota (7.4×)

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.

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

• Alva vs Alvin
• Alva vs Alvaro
• Alva vs Alvis
• Alva vs Alvie
• Alva vs Alvera
• Alvina vs Alvin
• Alvina vs Alvaro
• Alvina vs Alvis