Humanverse

Anais vs Ananda

American parents have registered 9,331 Anaises since 1880, against 1,735 Anandas. Anais is still ahead, with 310 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Anais against Ananda, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Anais Ananda

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 58 years in which either name was published, Anais for 43 years and Ananda for 15 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Anais Ananda
Total US births 9,3311,735
Most in one year 353128
Babies in 2025 310under 5
Estimated living today 9,2001,700
Median age today 1725
Peak year 20212002
Best rank 825th girls1,483rd girls
Rank in 2025 892ndunranked
First recorded 19721968
Girls / boys 9,213 / 1181,624 / 111

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 Anandas alive today are over 25; half the Anaises are over 17. 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 Anais Ananda
France 137,720 Anaïs235
England and Wales 2,85116

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: Anais and Ananda.