Humanverse

Ann vs Annamay

American parents have registered 471,625 Anns since 1880, against 748 Annamays. Ann is still ahead, with 225 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ann Annamay

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 2011, when Ann had 256 and Annamay had 7.

Side by side

  Ann Annamay
Total US births 471,625748
Most in one year 9,06838
Babies in 2025 225under 5
Estimated living today 257,000190
Median age today 6676
Peak year 19571922
Best rank 44th girls1,269th girls
Rank in 2025 1,076thunranked
First recorded 18801909
Girls / boys 470,261 / 1,364748 / 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 Annamays alive today are over 76; half the Anns are over 66. That is 10 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 Annamay
Ireland 13,0043 Anna May
England and Wales 8796

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 Annamay.