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Hanah vs Hank

American parents have registered 16,984 Hanks since 1880, against 2,057 Hanahs. Hank is still ahead, with 776 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Hanah Hank

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 114 years in which either name was published, Hank for 106 years and Hanah for 8 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Hanah Hank
Total US births 2,05716,984
Most in one year 118776
Babies in 2025 11776
Estimated living today 2,00015,000
Median age today 2411
Peak year 20012025
Best rank 1,573rd girls413th boys
Rank in 2025 8,860th413th
First recorded 19771908
Girls / boys 2,057 / 00 / 16,984

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 Hanahs alive today are over 24; half the Hanks are over 11. That is 13 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 Hanah Hank
England and Wales 18771

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: Hanah and Hank.