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Alaia vs Alanna

American parents have registered 27,019 Alannas since 1880, against 17,699 Alaias. But in 2025 it was Alaia that was commoner, 2,324 babies to 1,099.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Alaia against Alanna, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Alaia 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

Of the 86 years in which either name was published, Alanna for 79 years and Alaia for 7 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Alaia Alanna
Total US births 17,69927,019
Most in one year 2,4291,099
Babies in 2025 2,3241,099
Estimated living today 18,00026,000
Median age today 320
Peak year 20242025
Best rank 112th girls280th girls
Rank in 2025 117th280th
First recorded 19861930
Girls / boys 17,682 / 1727,012 / 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 Alaias are over 3. That is 17 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 Alaia Alanna
England and Wales 1,3181,854
Ireland 461,687
France 860 Alaïa240
Scotland 57755
Northern Ireland 15330
Switzerland 18227

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: Alaia and Alanna.