Humanverse

Aleta vs Alexa

American parents have registered 131,835 Alexas since 1880, against 6,446 Aletas. Alexa is still ahead, with 243 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Aleta 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 130 years in which either name was published, Aleta for 73 years and Alexa for 57 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Aleta Alexa
Total US births 6,446131,835
Most in one year 2626,125
Babies in 2025 5243
Estimated living today 4,500130,000
Median age today 6319
Peak year 19472006
Best rank 511th girls39th girls
Rank in 2025 14,942nd1,029th
First recorded 18921916
Girls / boys 6,446 / 0131,551 / 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 Aletas alive today are over 63; half the Alexas are over 19. That is 44 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 Aleta Alexa
England and Wales 34,176

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: Aleta and Alexa.