Humanverse

Ananda vs Anaya

American parents have registered 17,997 Anayas since 1880, against 1,735 Anandas. Anaya is still ahead, with 911 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ananda against Anaya, 1880 to 2025 0 250 500 750 1k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ananda Anaya

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, Anaya for 35 years and Ananda for 23 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Ananda Anaya
Total US births 1,73517,997
Most in one year 128911
Babies in 2025 under 5911
Estimated living today 1,70018,000
Median age today 2511
Peak year 20022025
Best rank 1,483rd girls336th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked336th
First recorded 19681978
Girls / boys 1,624 / 11117,997 / 0

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 Anayas are over 11. That is 14 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 Ananda Anaya
England and Wales 166,554
France 2352,290

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: Ananda and Anaya.