Humanverse

Ani vs Annie

American parents have registered 362,180 Annies since 1880, against 3,188 Anis. Annie is still ahead, with 1,690 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ani against Annie, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ani Annie

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

Annie 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 2007, when Ani had 127 and Annie had 784.

Side by side

  Ani Annie
Total US births 3,188362,180
Most in one year 1277,513
Babies in 2025 561,690
Estimated living today 3,100112,000
Median age today 1964
Peak year 20071922
Best rank 1,760th girls30th girls
Rank in 2025 2,957th182nd
First recorded 19581880
Girls / boys 3,183 / 5360,253 / 1,927

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 Annies alive today are over 64; half the Anis are over 19. That is 45 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 Ani Annie
France 285210,225
England and Wales 21311,799
Belgium 23107
Poland 62

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: Ani and Annie.