Humanverse

Ann vs Annaly

American parents have registered 471,625 Anns since 1880, against 572 Annalys. Ann is still ahead, with 225 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ann Annaly

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

Ann 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 2009, when Ann had 287 and Annaly had 40.

Side by side

  Ann Annaly
Total US births 471,625572
Most in one year 9,06840
Babies in 2025 2258
Estimated living today 257,000570
Median age today 6613
Peak year 19572009
Best rank 44th girls3,870th girls
Rank in 2025 1,076th10,917th
First recorded 18801990
Girls / boys 470,261 / 1,364572 / 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 Annalys 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 Annaly
France 5905

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 Annaly.