Humanverse

Ava vs Avalyn

American parents have registered 344,441 Avas since 1880, against 3,697 Avalyns. Ava is still ahead, with 7,739 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ava against Avalyn, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ava Avalyn

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

Ava 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 1932, when Ava had 145 and Avalyn had 5.

Side by side

  Ava Avalyn
Total US births 344,4413,697
Most in one year 18,065295
Babies in 2025 7,739136
Estimated living today 335,0003,700
Median age today 129
Peak year 20072017
Best rank 4th girls907th girls
Rank in 2025 11th1,548th
First recorded 18801932
Girls / boys 344,097 / 3443,697 / 0

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 Avas alive today are over 12; half the Avalyns are over 9. That is 3 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 Ava Avalyn
England and Wales 56,136124

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: Ava and Avalyn.