Humanverse

Alesha vs Alexa

American parents have registered 131,835 Alexas since 1880, against 7,553 Aleshas. Alexa is still ahead, with 243 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Alesha against Alexa, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Alesha Alexa

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 97 years in which either name was published, Alexa for 88 years and Alesha for 9 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.

Side by side

  Alesha Alexa
Total US births 7,553131,835
Most in one year 3066,125
Babies in 2025 13243
Estimated living today 7,300130,000
Median age today 3619
Peak year 19902006
Best rank 693rd girls39th girls
Rank in 2025 7,885th1,029th
First recorded 19591916
Girls / boys 7,547 / 6131,551 / 284

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 Aleshas alive today are over 36; half the Alexas are over 19. 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 Alesha Alexa
England and Wales 2,8504,176
Scotland 231404
Ireland 248221
Northern Ireland 133122

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: Alesha and Alexa.