Ala vs Alana

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Ala Alana

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 119 years in which either name was published, Alana for 92 years and Ala for 27 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

• 1889–1929 Ala ahead
• 1930–1931 Alana ahead
• 1932 Ala ahead
• 1933–1934 Alana ahead
• 1935–1936 Ala ahead
• 1937 Alana ahead
• 1938 Ala ahead
• 1939–2025 Alana 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 Alas alive today are over 25; half the Alanas are over 19. That is 6 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

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

• Ala vs Alan
• Ala vs Alaina
• Ala vs Alayna
• Ala vs Alanna
• Ala vs Alani
• Alana vs Alan
• Alana vs Alaina
• Alana vs Alayna