Humanverse

Alie vs Alison

American parents have registered 117,481 Alisons since 1880, against 611 Alies. Alison is still ahead, with 649 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Alie against Alison, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Alie Alison

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 118 years in which either name was published, Alison for 116 years and Alie for 2 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Alie Alison
Total US births 611117,481
Most in one year 323,000
Babies in 2025 under 5649
Estimated living today 540111,000
Median age today 2039
Peak year 20071980
Best rank 5,709th girls101st girls
Rank in 2025 unranked476th
First recorded 19061905
Girls / boys 528 / 83116,886 / 595

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 Alisons alive today are over 39; half the Alies are over 20. That is 19 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 Alie Alison
France 9016,015
England and Wales 31,308

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: Alie and Alison.