Humanverse

Amal vs Amanda

American parents have registered 792,774 Amandas since 1880, against 4,513 Amals. Amanda is still ahead, with 601 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Amal against Amanda, 1880 to 2025 0 12.5k 25k 37.5k 50k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Amal Amanda

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

Amanda 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 2021, when Amal had 247 and Amanda had 660.

Side by side

  Amal Amanda
Total US births 4,513792,774
Most in one year 24741,909
Babies in 2025 197601
Estimated living today 4,500748,000
Median age today 1239
Peak year 20211987
Best rank 1,045th girls3rd girls
Rank in 2025 1,241st493rd
First recorded 19621880
Girls / boys 4,141 / 372790,638 / 2,136

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 Amandas alive today are over 39; half the Amals are over 12. 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 Amal Amanda
France 3,8056,800
Scotland 997,290
Ireland 386,450
Norway 5724,904
England and Wales 2,5542,622
Italy 1,1003,509
Poland 102,539
Switzerland 1181,244
Belgium 754359
Northern Ireland 376

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: Amal and Amanda.