Humanverse

Aaliyah vs Alyia

American parents have registered 110,077 Aaliyahs since 1880, against 527 Alyias. Aaliyah is still ahead, with 2,607 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Aaliyah against Alyia, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Aaliyah Alyia

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

Aaliyah has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1976 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1990, when Aaliyah had 12 and Alyia had 5.

Side by side

  Aaliyah Alyia
Total US births 110,077527
Most in one year 5,53033
Babies in 2025 2,6077
Estimated living today 109,000520
Median age today 1319
Peak year 20122000
Best rank 36th girls3,808th girls
Rank in 2025 101st11,932nd
First recorded 19761986
Girls / boys 109,971 / 106527 / 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 Alyias alive today are over 19; half the Aaliyahs are over 13. That is 6 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 Aaliyah Alyia
England and Wales 11,1143
France 4,205130

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: Aaliyah and Alyia.