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Ann vs Annabella

American parents have registered 471,625 Anns since 1880, against 15,007 Annabellas. Ann is still ahead, with 225 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ann against Annabella, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ann Annabella

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, Ann for 130 years and Annabella for 16 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Ann Annabella
Total US births 471,62515,007
Most in one year 9,0681,280
Babies in 2025 225163
Estimated living today 257,00015,000
Median age today 6613
Peak year 19572014
Best rank 44th girls256th girls
Rank in 2025 1,076th1,352nd
First recorded 18801912
Girls / boys 470,261 / 1,36415,007 / 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 Anns alive today are over 66; half the Annabellas are over 13. That is 53 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 Ann Annabella
Ireland 13,00441
England and Wales 8792,290
Scotland 1,441113
France 590725
Belgium 9816
Northern Ireland 3223

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: Ann and Annabella.