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Ameila vs Amethyst

American parents have registered 4,576 Amethysts since 1880, against 549 Ameilas. Amethyst is still ahead, with 181 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ameila against Amethyst, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ameila Amethyst

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

Amethyst has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1967 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1978, when Ameila had 5 and Amethyst had 14.

Side by side

  Ameila Amethyst
Total US births 5494,576
Most in one year 46240
Babies in 2025 30181
Estimated living today 5404,500
Median age today 814
Peak year 20202022
Best rank 3,338th girls1,069th girls
Rank in 2025 4,546th1,241st
First recorded 19781967
Girls / boys 549 / 04,560 / 16

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 Amethysts alive today are over 14; half the Ameilas are over 8. That is 6 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 Ameila Amethyst
England and Wales 83120

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: Ameila and Amethyst.