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Aila vs Aileen

American parents have registered 37,642 Aileens since 1880, against 4,268 Ailas. Aileen is still ahead, with 340 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Aila against Aileen, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Aila Aileen

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

Of the 143 years in which either name was published, Aileen for 142 years and Aila for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Aila Aileen
Total US births 4,26837,642
Most in one year 378685
Babies in 2025 329340
Estimated living today 4,20026,000
Median age today 624
Peak year 20212009
Best rank 752nd girls454th girls
Rank in 2025 827th799th
First recorded 19201880
Girls / boys 4,268 / 037,637 / 5

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 Aileens alive today are over 24; half the Ailas are over 6. That is 18 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 Aila Aileen
Ireland 392,499
England and Wales 1,357222
Scotland 576993
France 195 Aïla450
Switzerland 191330
Norway 6169
Northern Ireland 1437
Belgium 1732
Poland 132

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: Aila and Aileen.