Humanverse

Ana vs Anais

American parents have registered 111,960 Anas since 1880, against 9,331 Anaises. Ana is still ahead, with 1,276 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ana Anais

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

Ana 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 Ana had 1,282 and Anais had 353.

Side by side

  Ana Anais
Total US births 111,9609,331
Most in one year 2,672353
Babies in 2025 1,276310
Estimated living today 106,0009,200
Median age today 2917
Peak year 19912021
Best rank 119th girls825th girls
Rank in 2025 245th892nd
First recorded 18801972
Girls / boys 111,359 / 6019,213 / 118

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 Anas alive today are over 29; half the Anaises are over 17. That is 12 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 Ana Anais
France 13,300137,720 Anaïs
Belgium 1,0246,038 Anaïs
England and Wales 3,0792,851
Switzerland 1,6841,979 Anaïs
Italy 560588
Ireland 42082
Scotland 22779
Poland 23722
Northern Ireland 12723

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: Ana and Anais.