Humanverse

Ashley vs Ashlynn

American parents have registered 875,722 Ashleys since 1880, against 25,846 Ashlynns. Ashley is still ahead, with 1,856 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ashley against Ashlynn, 1880 to 2025 0 15k 30k 45k 60k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ashley Ashlynn

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

Ashley 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 2014, when Ashley had 3,600 and Ashlynn had 1,020.

Side by side

  Ashley Ashlynn
Total US births 875,72225,846
Most in one year 55,2651,329
Babies in 2025 1,856258
Estimated living today 853,00026,000
Median age today 3417
Peak year 19872010
Best rank 2nd girls237th girls
Rank in 2025 164th980th
First recorded 18801964
Girls / boys 859,857 / 15,86525,834 / 12

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 Ashleys alive today are over 34; half the Ashlynns are over 17. That is 17 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 Ashley Ashlynn
England and Wales 15,18666
Scotland 6,0203
Ireland 1,2393
Northern Ireland 1543

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: Ashley and Ashlynn.