Humanverse

Ainsleigh vs Ainsley

American parents have registered 20,896 Ainsleys since 1880, against 626 Ainsleighs. Ainsley is still ahead, with 629 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ainsleigh against Ainsley, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ainsleigh Ainsley

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

Ainsley has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1950 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2000, when Ainsleigh had 11 and Ainsley had 129.

Side by side

  Ainsleigh Ainsley
Total US births 62620,896
Most in one year 391,013
Babies in 2025 18629
Estimated living today 62021,000
Median age today 1213
Peak year 20152014
Best rank 3,842nd girls337th girls
Rank in 2025 6,325th483rd
First recorded 19981950
Girls / boys 626 / 020,470 / 426

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 Ainsleigh Ainsley
Scotland 28524
England and Wales 16382

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: Ainsleigh and Ainsley.