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Ida vs Idalia

American parents have registered 188,695 Idas since 1880, against 3,338 Idalias. Ida is still ahead, with 209 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ida against Idalia, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ida Idalia

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

Ida 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 2023, when Ida had 203 and Idalia had 160.

Side by side

  Ida Idalia
Total US births 188,6953,338
Most in one year 4,470160
Babies in 2025 20986
Estimated living today 35,0003,000
Median age today 7130
Peak year 19182023
Best rank 57th girls1,402nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,120th2,153rd
First recorded 18801889
Girls / boys 187,929 / 7663,338 / 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 Idas alive today are over 71; half the Idalias are over 30. That is 41 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 Ida Idalia
France 14,82545
Poland 4,894684
England and Wales 2,25950
Belgium 78611

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: Ida and Idalia.