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Ayaan vs Ayana

American parents have registered 12,096 Ayanas since 1880, against 9,154 Ayaans. But in 2025 it was Ayaan that was commoner, 686 babies to 200.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ayaan against Ayana, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ayaan Ayana

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 56 years in which either name was published, Ayana for 41 years and Ayaan for 15 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Ayaan Ayana
Total US births 9,15412,096
Most in one year 686405
Babies in 2025 686200
Estimated living today 9,10012,000
Median age today 721
Peak year 20252006
Best rank 465th boys700th girls
Rank in 2025 465th1,160th
First recorded 19951970
Girls / boys 251 / 8,90312,091 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Ayanas alive today are over 21; half the Ayaans are over 7. That is 14 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 Ayaan Ayana
England and Wales 8,7141,405
France 8902,055
Switzerland 121660
Belgium 188191
Scotland 27547
Ireland 13817
Poland 265

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: Ayaan and Ayana.