Humanverse

Alaa vs Alanna

American parents have registered 27,019 Alannas since 1880, against 1,989 Alaas. Alanna is still ahead, with 1,099 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Alaa Alanna

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

Alanna has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1930 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2017, when Alaa had 69 and Alanna had 568.

Side by side

  Alaa Alanna
Total US births 1,98927,019
Most in one year 691,099
Babies in 2025 551,099
Estimated living today 2,00026,000
Median age today 1720
Peak year 20172025
Best rank 2,779th girls280th girls
Rank in 2025 3,211th280th
First recorded 19791930
Girls / boys 1,525 / 46427,012 / 7

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 Alannas alive today are over 20; half the Alaas are over 17. That is 3 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 Alaa Alanna
England and Wales 5641,854
Ireland 171,687
France 1,210240
Scotland 12755

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: Alaa and Alanna.