Humanverse

Zander vs Zane

American parents have registered 57,228 Zanes since 1880, against 28,786 Zanders. Zane is still ahead, with 1,051 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Zander against Zane, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Zander Zane

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

Zane has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1914 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2012, when Zander had 1,478 and Zane had 1,601.

Side by side

  Zander Zane
Total US births 28,78657,228
Most in one year 1,6002,041
Babies in 2025 8041,051
Estimated living today 29,00054,000
Median age today 1117
Peak year 20132018
Best rank 230th boys199th boys
Rank in 2025 396th324th
First recorded 19151914
Girls / boys 36 / 28,750564 / 56,664

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 Zanes alive today are over 17; half the Zanders are over 11. 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 Zander Zane
England and Wales 1,0142,977
Scotland 542128
Ireland 1894
Belgium 876
Northern Ireland 2423
France 520
Poland 22

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: Zander and Zane.