Alaine vs Alana

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Alaine 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 103 years in which either name was published, Alana for 89 years and Alaine for 14 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

• 1916–1928 Alaine ahead
• 1930 Alana ahead
• 1931 Alaine ahead
• 1932–1933 Alana ahead
• 1934–1938 Alaine ahead
• 1939–1940 Alana ahead
• 1941 Alaine ahead
• 1942–2025 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 Alaines alive today are over 42; half the Alanas are over 19. That is 23 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

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