Humanverse

Ava vs Avary

American parents have registered 344,441 Avas since 1880, against 1,771 Avarys. Ava is still ahead, with 7,739 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ava Avary

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 1994, when Ava had 276 and Avary had 8.

Side by side

  Ava Avary
Total US births 344,4411,771
Most in one year 18,065121
Babies in 2025 7,73920
Estimated living today 335,0001,800
Median age today 1214
Peak year 20072007
Best rank 4th girls1,868th girls
Rank in 2025 11th5,917th
First recorded 18801990
Girls / boys 344,097 / 3441,657 / 114

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 Avarys alive today are over 14; half the Avas are over 12. That is 2 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 Avary
England and Wales 56,13621

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 Avary.