Humanverse

Alakai vs Alani

American parents have registered 18,910 Alanis since 1880, against 910 Alakais. Alani is still ahead, with 1,849 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Alakai against Alani, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Alakai Alani

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

Alani has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1978 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1996, when Alakai had 6 and Alani had 51.

Side by side

  Alakai Alani
Total US births 91018,910
Most in one year 1121,849
Babies in 2025 881,849
Estimated living today 90019,000
Median age today 45
Peak year 20232025
Best rank 1,558th boys161st girls
Rank in 2025 1,808th161st
First recorded 19961978
Girls / boys 0 / 91018,799 / 111

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.

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 Alakai Alani
England and Wales 11244

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: Alakai and Alani.