Humanverse

Akeelah vs Akeem

American parents have registered 6,825 Akeems since 1880, against 1,533 Akeelahs. Akeem is still ahead, with 71 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Akeelah against Akeem, 1880 to 2025 0 150 300 450 600 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Akeelah Akeem

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 54 years in which either name was published, Akeem for 49 years and Akeelah for 5 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Akeelah Akeem
Total US births 1,5336,825
Most in one year 403570
Babies in 2025 1571
Estimated living today 1,5006,600
Median age today 1731
Peak year 20061990
Best rank 708th girls405th boys
Rank in 2025 7,133rd2,077th
First recorded 19891972
Girls / boys 1,533 / 00 / 6,825

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 Akeems alive today are over 31; half the Akeelahs are over 17. 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 Akeelah Akeem
England and Wales 73408

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: Akeelah and Akeem.