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Nava vs Navy

American parents have registered 6,717 Navys since 1880, against 1,513 Navas. Navy is still ahead, with 1,045 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nava against Navy, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nava Navy

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 52 years in which either name was published, Nava for 35 years and Navy for 17 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

Side by side

  Nava Navy
Total US births 1,5136,717
Most in one year 831,045
Babies in 2025 831,045
Estimated living today 1,5006,700
Median age today 103
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 2,214th girls327th girls
Rank in 2025 2,214th327th
First recorded 19231985
Girls / boys 1,513 / 05,913 / 804

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 Navas alive today are over 10; half the Navys are over 3. That is 7 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 Nava Navy
England and Wales 57569
France 18530
Switzerland 633

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: Nava and Navy.