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Zander vs Zaniah

American parents have registered 28,786 Zanders since 1880, against 1,766 Zaniahs. Zander is still ahead, with 804 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Zander against Zaniah, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Zander Zaniah

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

Zander has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1915 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1994, when Zander had 8 and Zaniah had 5.

Side by side

  Zander Zaniah
Total US births 28,7861,766
Most in one year 1,600130
Babies in 2025 80435
Estimated living today 29,0001,800
Median age today 1114
Peak year 20132008
Best rank 230th boys1,713th girls
Rank in 2025 396th4,067th
First recorded 19151994
Girls / boys 36 / 28,7501,766 / 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 Zaniahs alive today are over 14; half the Zanders are over 11. That is 3 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 Zaniah
England and Wales 1,01421

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 Zaniah.