Humanverse

Ailee vs Aileen

American parents have registered 37,642 Aileens since 1880, against 876 Ailees. Aileen is still ahead, with 340 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ailee 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

Aileen 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 Ailee had 56 and Aileen had 407.

Side by side

  Ailee Aileen
Total US births 87637,642
Most in one year 56685
Babies in 2025 27340
Estimated living today 87026,000
Median age today 1024
Peak year 20222009
Best rank 2,956th girls454th girls
Rank in 2025 4,878th799th
First recorded 19741880
Girls / boys 876 / 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 Ailees are over 10. That is 14 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 Ailee Aileen
Scotland 12993
France 5 Aïlee450
England and Wales 4222

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: Ailee and Aileen.