Humanverse

Anika vs Anil

American parents have registered 16,804 Anikas since 1880, against 1,160 Anils. Anika is still ahead, with 269 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Anika Anil

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 66 years in which either name was published, Anika for 57 years and Anil for 9 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Anika Anil
Total US births 16,8041,160
Most in one year 64246
Babies in 2025 269under 5
Estimated living today 17,0001,100
Median age today 1838
Peak year 20061989
Best rank 484th girls1,678th boys
Rank in 2025 955thunranked
First recorded 19611959
Girls / boys 16,804 / 00 / 1,160

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 Anils alive today are over 38; half the Anikas are over 18. That is 20 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 Anika Anil
England and Wales 2,094274
France 265630
Switzerland 504147
Belgium 101154

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: Anika and Anil.