Pola vs Pollyanna

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Pola Pollyanna

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 101 years in which either name was published, Pollyanna for 60 years and Pola for 41 years. The lead changed hands 21 times.

• 1914–1922 Pollyanna ahead
• 1923–1928 Pola ahead
• 1937–1940 Pollyanna ahead
• 1941–1948 Pola ahead, apart from one short spell
• 1960–2003 Pollyanna ahead
• 2005–2022 Pola ahead, apart from one short spell
• 2023–2025 Pollyanna ahead

13 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

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 Pollyannas alive today are over 52; half the Polas are over 17. That is 35 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

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

• Pola vs Polly
• Pola vs Polina
• Pola vs Pollie
• Pola vs Polo
• Pollyanna vs Polly
• Pollyanna vs Polina
• Pollyanna vs Pollie
• Pollyanna vs Polo