Humanverse

Arabelle vs Araceli

American parents have registered 20,406 Aracelis since 1880, against 2,272 Arabelles. Araceli is still ahead, with 364 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Arabelle against Araceli, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Arabelle Araceli

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 116 years in which either name was published, Araceli for 82 years and Arabelle for 34 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Arabelle Araceli
Total US births 2,27220,406
Most in one year 147573
Babies in 2025 93364
Estimated living today 1,90020,000
Median age today 928
Peak year 20172002
Best rank 1,505th girls487th girls
Rank in 2025 2,036th746th
First recorded 18931939
Girls / boys 2,272 / 020,268 / 138

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 Aracelis alive today are over 28; half the Arabelles are over 9. That is 19 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 Arabelle Araceli
England and Wales 2338
France 14070

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: Arabelle and Araceli.