Humanverse

Asher vs Ashleigh

American parents have registered 112,690 Ashers since 1880, against 31,944 Ashleighs. Asher is still ahead, with 7,519 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Asher against Ashleigh, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Asher Ashleigh

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 121 years in which either name was published, Asher for 87 years and Ashleigh for 34 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Asher Ashleigh
Total US births 112,69031,944
Most in one year 8,5271,717
Babies in 2025 7,51916
Estimated living today 111,00031,000
Median age today 732
Peak year 20221991
Best rank 20th boys176th girls
Rank in 2025 28th6,838th
First recorded 18801966
Girls / boys 1,463 / 111,22731,861 / 83

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 Ashleighs alive today are over 32; half the Ashers are over 7. That is 25 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 Asher Ashleigh
England and Wales 4,5097,880
New Zealand 9163,158
Scotland 2383,082
Ireland 144357
Northern Ireland 96152

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: Asher and Ashleigh.