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Anila vs Anita

American parents have registered 215,849 Anitas since 1880, against 592 Anilas. Anita is still ahead, with 165 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Anila 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 2013, when Anila had 28 and Anita had 151.

Side by side

  Anila Anita
Total US births 592215,849
Most in one year 295,831
Babies in 2025 21165
Estimated living today 590139,000
Median age today 1364
Peak year 20091957
Best rank 4,931st girls81st girls
Rank in 2025 5,722nd1,341st
First recorded 19791880
Girls / boys 592 / 0215,165 / 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 Anilas are over 13. That is 51 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Anila Anita
France 7029,865
England and Wales 1161,119
Switzerland 250619
Belgium 5160

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: Anila and Anita.