Humanverse

Aileen vs Ailsa

American parents have registered 37,642 Aileens since 1880, against 538 Ailsas. Aileen is still ahead, with 340 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Aileen Ailsa

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 1978, when Aileen had 159 and Ailsa had 13.

Side by side

  Aileen Ailsa
Total US births 37,642538
Most in one year 68519
Babies in 2025 340under 5
Estimated living today 26,000500
Median age today 2424
Peak year 20092003
Best rank 454th girls6,055th girls
Rank in 2025 799thunranked
First recorded 18801918
Girls / boys 37,637 / 5538 / 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.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Aileen Ailsa
Scotland 9931,800
Ireland 2,49911
England and Wales 222717
France 4505
Northern Ireland 3711

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: Aileen and Ailsa.