Humanverse

Novalee vs Novaleigh

American parents have registered 4,567 Novalees since 1880, against 1,451 Novaleighs. Novalee is still ahead, with 261 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Novalee against Novaleigh, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Novalee Novaleigh

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

Novalee has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1962 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Novalee had 344 and Novaleigh had 201.

Side by side

  Novalee Novaleigh
Total US births 4,5671,451
Most in one year 379201
Babies in 2025 26185
Estimated living today 4,5001,400
Median age today 65
Peak year 20242022
Best rank 742nd girls1,199th girls
Rank in 2025 975th2,173rd
First recorded 19622001
Girls / boys 4,567 / 01,451 / 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.

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 Novalee Novaleigh
England and Wales 3022

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: Novalee and Novaleigh.