Humanverse

Alexa vs Alexander

American parents have registered 740,668 Alexanders since 1880, against 131,835 Alexas. Alexander is still ahead, with 7,244 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Alexa against Alexander, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Alexa Alexander

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

Alexander has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2015, when Alexa had 6,067 and Alexander had 14,606.

Side by side

  Alexa Alexander
Total US births 131,835740,668
Most in one year 6,12520,708
Babies in 2025 2437,244
Estimated living today 130,000676,000
Median age today 1924
Peak year 20061993
Best rank 39th girls21st boys
Rank in 2025 1,029th30th
First recorded 19161880
Girls / boys 131,551 / 2844,545 / 736,123

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 Alexanders alive today are over 24; half the Alexas are over 19. That is 5 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 Alexa Alexander
England and Wales 4,17686,796
Scotland 40415,224
Poland 237,606
Belgium 2016,377
Ireland 2215,357
Italy 2624,547
France 2,1102,650
Northern Ireland 1221,771

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: Alexa and Alexander.