Humanverse

Alyn vs Alyssa

American parents have registered 315,038 Alyssas since 1880, against 798 Alyns. Alyssa is still ahead, with 680 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Alyn against Alyssa, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Alyn Alyssa

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 94 years in which either name was published, Alyssa for 69 years and Alyn for 25 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Alyn Alyssa
Total US births 798315,038
Most in one year 3814,050
Babies in 2025 13680
Estimated living today 660310,000
Median age today 2125
Peak year 20051999
Best rank 4,373rd girls11th girls
Rank in 2025 11,932nd453rd
First recorded 19281950
Girls / boys 477 / 321314,606 / 432

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 Alyssas alive today are over 25; half the Alyns are over 21. That is 4 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 Alyn Alyssa
England and Wales 36,744
Scotland 15892

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: Alyn and Alyssa.