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Alinah vs Alisha

American parents have registered 57,127 Alishas since 1880, against 679 Alinahs. Alisha is still ahead, with 183 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Alinah Alisha

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

Alisha has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1948 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2021, when Alinah had 32 and Alisha had 188.

Side by side

  Alinah Alisha
Total US births 67957,127
Most in one year 502,457
Babies in 2025 16183
Estimated living today 67055,000
Median age today 1037
Peak year 20151989
Best rank 3,254th girls123rd girls
Rank in 2025 6,838th1,229th
First recorded 19941948
Girls / boys 679 / 056,996 / 131

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 Alishas alive today are over 37; half the Alinahs are over 10. That is 27 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 Alinah Alisha
England and Wales 5514,966
France 5480

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: Alinah and Alisha.