Aila vs Ailish

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Aila Ailish

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 40 years in which either name was published, Aila for 32 years and Ailish for 8 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

• 1920–1992 Aila ahead
• 1993 Ailish ahead
• 1994 Aila ahead
• 1995–2000 Ailish ahead
• 2001–2002 Aila ahead
• 2003 Ailish ahead
• 2004–2025 Aila ahead

Side by side

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 Ailishes alive today are over 16; half the Ailas are over 6. That is 10 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Aila Hawaii (5.6×), Washington (2.9×), California (2.1×)
• Ailish California (4.3×), New York (3.7×)

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.

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

• Aila vs Aileen
• Aila vs Ailany
• Aila vs Ailani
• Aila vs Ailyn
• Aila vs Ailene
• Aila vs Aili
• Ailish vs Aileen
• Ailish vs Ailany