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Anilah vs Aniyah

American parents have registered 31,212 Aniyahs since 1880, against 513 Anilahs. Aniyah is still ahead, with 618 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Anilah against Aniyah, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Anilah Aniyah

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

Aniyah has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1991 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Anilah had 21 and Aniyah had 618.

Side by side

  Anilah Aniyah
Total US births 51331,212
Most in one year 401,825
Babies in 2025 21618
Estimated living today 51031,000
Median age today 1114
Peak year 20122009
Best rank 3,854th girls181st girls
Rank in 2025 5,722nd485th
First recorded 20041991
Girls / boys 513 / 031,207 / 5

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 Aniyahs alive today are over 14; half the Anilahs are over 11. That is 3 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 Anilah Aniyah
England and Wales 31,198

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: Anilah and Aniyah.