Humanverse

Zana vs Zania

American parents have registered 2,288 Zanas since 1880, against 886 Zanias. Zana is still ahead, with 27 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Zana against Zania, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Zana Zania

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 127 years in which either name was published, Zana for 109 years and Zania for 18 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Zana Zania
Total US births 2,288886
Most in one year 25261
Babies in 2025 2721
Estimated living today 1,800880
Median age today 3118
Peak year 19942006
Best rank 802nd girls2,850th girls
Rank in 2025 4,878th5,722nd
First recorded 18821983
Girls / boys 2,288 / 0886 / 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 Zanas alive today are over 31; half the Zanias are over 18. That is 13 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.

Country Zana Zania
England and Wales 2073

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: Zana and Zania.