Humanverse

Alli vs Allyson

American parents have registered 53,779 Allysons since 1880, against 3,810 Allis. Allyson is still ahead, with 203 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Alli against Allyson, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Alli Allyson

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 83 years in which either name was published, Allyson for 81 years and Alli for 2 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Alli Allyson
Total US births 3,81053,779
Most in one year 2051,651
Babies in 2025 18203
Estimated living today 3,80052,000
Median age today 1927
Peak year 20111998
Best rank 1,177th girls186th girls
Rank in 2025 6,325th1,139th
First recorded 19161945
Girls / boys 3,805 / 553,758 / 21

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 Allysons alive today are over 27; half the Allis are over 19. That is 8 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 Alli Allyson
France 10800
Scotland 4137
England and Wales 853
Ireland 173

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: Alli and Allyson.