Humanverse

Aarnik vs Aaron

American parents have registered 618,857 Aarons since 1880, against 77 Aarniks. Aaron is still ahead, with 4,058 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Aarnik against Aaron, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Aarnik Aaron

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

Aaron has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Aarnik had 17 and Aaron had 4,538.

Side by side

  Aarnik Aaron
Total US births 77618,857
Most in one year 1715,407
Babies in 2025 84,058
Estimated living today 80566,000
Median age today 334
Peak year 20221989
Best rank 5,445th boys31st boys
Rank in 2025 8,910th80th
First recorded 20201880
Girls / boys 0 / 774,395 / 614,462

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 Aarons alive today are over 34; half the Aarniks are over 3. That is 31 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 Aarnik Aaron
England and Wales 1036,653

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: Aarnik and Aaron.