Humanverse

Tanner vs Tanya

American parents have registered 117,260 Tanyas since 1880, against 100,166 Tanners. But in 2025 it was Tanner that was commoner, 684 babies to 40.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Tanner against Tanya, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Tanner Tanya

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 112 years in which either name was published, Tanya for 74 years and Tanner for 38 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Tanner Tanya
Total US births 100,166117,260
Most in one year 4,8276,038
Babies in 2025 68440
Estimated living today 98,000108,000
Median age today 2450
Peak year 19981974
Best rank 82nd boys46th girls
Rank in 2025 475th3,712th
First recorded 19131914
Girls / boys 2,541 / 97,625116,855 / 405

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 Tanyas alive today are over 50; half the Tanners are over 24. That is 26 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 Tanner Tanya
England and Wales 2191,945

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: Tanner and Tanya.