Humanverse

Ailish

About 655 American babies have been named Ailish since 1991, most of them around 2016. In 2025 it ranked 10,917th. About 650 Ailishes are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 16.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 10 20 30 40 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Ailish

By the numbers

Total US births
655
Estimated living today
650
Median age today
16
Peak year
2016
Best rank
3,923rd
Rank in 2025
10,917th
First recorded
1991

How old the living Ailishes are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 10 20 30 40 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 655 babies given the name since 1991, about 650 are alive — 99 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2009 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Irish

Phonetic rendering of Irish Ailís (“Alice”) or Eilís (“Elizabeth”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Where Ailish is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Ailish is most concentrated in California (4.3×), New York (3.7×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2016

The most popular girls’ names the year Ailish peaked:

All the names of 2016

Ailish elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
Ireland girls Ailish 1,064 159th
England and Wales girls Ailish 398 551st
Scotland girls Ailish 224 247th
Northern Ireland girls Ailish 12 301st

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Related names

Ailish against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Ailish with a name of your own

Try it on yourself

Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.