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Aya vs Ayah

American parents have registered 7,987 Ayas since 1880, against 4,814 Ayahs. Aya is still ahead, with 449 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Aya against Ayah, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Aya Ayah

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

Aya has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1972 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1996, when Aya had 56 and Ayah had 54.

Side by side

  Aya Ayah
Total US births 7,9874,814
Most in one year 469309
Babies in 2025 449309
Estimated living today 7,9004,800
Median age today 1010
Peak year 20242025
Best rank 630th girls869th girls
Rank in 2025 644th869th
First recorded 19721986
Girls / boys 7,987 / 04,809 / 5

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.

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 Aya Ayah
France 20,9301,455
England and Wales 2,8133,027
Belgium 3,817226
Switzerland 53161
Ireland 12835
Scotland 7954
Poland 1254

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: Aya and Ayah.