Humanverse

Anne vs Annika

American parents have registered 325,954 Annes since 1880, against 19,594 Annikas. Anne is still ahead, with 472 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Anne Annika

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, Anne for 136 years and Annika for 10 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Anne Annika
Total US births 325,95419,594
Most in one year 5,7551,089
Babies in 2025 472254
Estimated living today 189,00019,000
Median age today 6119
Peak year 19592003
Best rank 82nd girls285th girls
Rank in 2025 619th995th
First recorded 18801961
Girls / boys 325,128 / 82619,594 / 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 Annes alive today are over 61; half the Annikas are over 19. That is 42 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 Anne Annika
France 364,01080
Norway 56,4871,268
Ireland 12,26420
Scotland 2,20554
England and Wales 1,130896
Switzerland 343941
Belgium 918115
Poland 1563

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: Anne and Annika.