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Arlis vs Arlo

American parents have registered 25,135 Arlos since 1880, against 2,769 Arlises. Arlo is still ahead, with 2,514 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Arlis against Arlo, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Arlis Arlo

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 123 years in which either name was published, Arlo for 96 years and Arlis for 27 years. The lead changed hands 18 times.

10 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Arlis Arlo
Total US births 2,76925,135
Most in one year 692,574
Babies in 2025 232,514
Estimated living today 1,20023,000
Median age today 674
Peak year 19312024
Best rank 939th boys146th boys
Rank in 2025 4,396th148th
First recorded 19061899
Girls / boys 797 / 1,972890 / 24,245

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 Arlises alive today are over 67; half the Arlos are over 4. That is 63 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 Arlis Arlo
England and Wales 1721,258

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: Arlis and Arlo.