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Nia vs Niah

American parents have registered 25,432 Nias since 1880, against 1,741 Niahs. Nia is still ahead, with 403 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nia Niah

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

Nia has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1951 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2013, when Nia had 595 and Niah had 77.

Side by side

  Nia Niah
Total US births 25,4321,741
Most in one year 1,03377
Babies in 2025 40324
Estimated living today 25,0001,700
Median age today 2014
Peak year 20002013
Best rank 307th girls2,364th girls
Rank in 2025 702nd5,238th
First recorded 19511982
Girls / boys 25,422 / 101,741 / 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 Nias alive today are over 20; half the Niahs are over 14. That is 6 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 Nia Niah
England and Wales 4,778602
France 27010
Ireland 2256
Scotland 16717

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: Nia and Niah.