Humanverse

Ari vs Ariel

American parents have registered 100,665 Ariels since 1880, against 28,254 Aris. Ariel is still ahead, with 1,384 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ari Ariel

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 125 years in which either name was published, Ariel for 120 years and Ari for 5 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Ari Ariel
Total US births 28,254100,665
Most in one year 1,7526,077
Babies in 2025 1,2841,384
Estimated living today 28,00098,000
Median age today 1023
Peak year 20221991
Best rank 328th boys66th girls
Rank in 2025 393rd355th
First recorded 19581892
Girls / boys 7,662 / 20,59278,697 / 21,968

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 Ariels alive today are over 23; half the Aris are over 10. That is 13 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 Ari Ariel
France 7702,675
England and Wales 1,8391,008
Norway 247615
Switzerland 593212
Poland 12459
Belgium 21359
Scotland 13211
Ireland 5027

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: Ari and Ariel.