Humanverse

Alaine vs Alanna

American parents have registered 27,019 Alannas since 1880, against 1,454 Alaines. Alanna is still ahead, with 1,099 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Alaine 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 102 years in which either name was published, Alanna for 84 years and Alaine for 18 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

Side by side

  Alaine Alanna
Total US births 1,45427,019
Most in one year 331,099
Babies in 2025 111,099
Estimated living today 1,20026,000
Median age today 4220
Peak year 19672025
Best rank 2,039th girls280th girls
Rank in 2025 8,860th280th
First recorded 19161930
Girls / boys 1,454 / 027,012 / 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 Alaines alive today are over 42; half the Alannas are over 20. That is 22 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.

Country Alaine Alanna
England and Wales 31,854
Ireland 151,687
Scotland 7755
France 5240

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: Alaine and Alanna.