Humanverse

Anil vs Anita

American parents have registered 215,849 Anitas since 1880, against 1,160 Anils. Anita is still ahead, with 165 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Anil against Anita, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Anil Anita

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

Anita 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 2000, when Anil had 28 and Anita had 314.

Side by side

  Anil Anita
Total US births 1,160215,849
Most in one year 465,831
Babies in 2025 under 5165
Estimated living today 1,100139,000
Median age today 3864
Peak year 19891957
Best rank 1,678th boys81st girls
Rank in 2025 unranked1,341st
First recorded 19591880
Girls / boys 0 / 1,160215,165 / 684

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 Anitas alive today are over 64; half the Anils are over 38. That is 26 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 Anil Anita
France 63029,865
England and Wales 2741,119
Switzerland 147619
Belgium 154160

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: Anil and Anita.