Humanverse

Angel vs Angelena

American parents have registered 366,174 Angels since 1880, against 3,205 Angelenas. Angel is still ahead, with 5,308 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Angel against Angelena, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Angel Angelena

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 129 years in which either name was published, Angel for 126 years and Angelena for 3 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Angel Angelena
Total US births 366,1743,205
Most in one year 13,828119
Babies in 2025 5,308under 5
Estimated living today 352,0002,700
Median age today 2130
Peak year 20062005
Best rank 31st boys1,668th girls
Rank in 2025 67thunranked
First recorded 18881902
Girls / boys 100,288 / 265,8863,205 / 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 Angelenas alive today are over 30; half the Angels are over 21. That is 9 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 Angel Angelena
England and Wales 8,6143

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: Angel and Angelena.