Humanverse

Anita vs Aniya

American parents have registered 215,849 Anitas since 1880, against 18,085 Aniyas. But in 2025 it was Aniya that was commoner, 226 babies to 165.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Anita Aniya

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 146 years in which either name was published, Anita for 119 years and Aniya for 27 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Anita Aniya
Total US births 215,84918,085
Most in one year 5,8311,271
Babies in 2025 165226
Estimated living today 139,00018,000
Median age today 6417
Peak year 19572007
Best rank 81st girls267th girls
Rank in 2025 1,341st1,071st
First recorded 18801979
Girls / boys 215,165 / 68418,085 / 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 Anitas alive today are over 64; half the Aniyas are over 17. That is 47 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 Anita Aniya
France 29,865155
England and Wales 1,119611
Scotland 2574

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: Anita and Aniya.