Humanverse

Annabelle vs Anneka

American parents have registered 67,553 Annabelles since 1880, against 846 Annekas. Annabelle is still ahead, with 891 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Annabelle against Anneka, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Annabelle Anneka

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

Annabelle 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 1980, when Annabelle had 56 and Anneka had 24.

Side by side

  Annabelle Anneka
Total US births 67,553846
Most in one year 4,36341
Babies in 2025 8916
Estimated living today 54,000830
Median age today 1325
Peak year 20142006
Best rank 57th girls3,734th girls
Rank in 2025 343rd13,208th
First recorded 18801971
Girls / boys 67,543 / 10846 / 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 Annekas alive today are over 25; half the Annabelles are over 13. That is 12 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 Annabelle Anneka
England and Wales 15,457211
Ireland 74117
Scotland 58122

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: Annabelle and Anneka.