Humanverse

Anisha vs Anita

American parents have registered 215,849 Anitas since 1880, against 4,546 Anishas. Anita is still ahead, with 165 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Anisha against Anita, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Anisha Anita

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

Anita 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 2010, when Anisha had 121 and Anita had 174.

Side by side

  Anisha Anita
Total US births 4,546215,849
Most in one year 1445,831
Babies in 2025 30165
Estimated living today 4,500139,000
Median age today 2664
Peak year 20021957
Best rank 1,345th girls81st girls
Rank in 2025 4,546th1,341st
First recorded 19681880
Girls / boys 4,546 / 0215,165 / 684

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 Anitas alive today are over 64; half the Anishas are over 26. That is 38 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 Anisha Anita
France 9529,865
England and Wales 1,7131,119
Ireland 142,333
Switzerland 125619
Scotland 18257

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: Anisha and Anita.