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Ariah vs Ariel

American parents have registered 100,665 Ariels since 1880, against 11,751 Ariahs. Ariel is still ahead, with 1,384 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ariah against Ariel, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ariah Ariel

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

Ariel has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1892 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2018, when Ariah had 934 and Ariel had 2,302.

Side by side

  Ariah Ariel
Total US births 11,751100,665
Most in one year 1,0536,077
Babies in 2025 4571,384
Estimated living today 12,00098,000
Median age today 823
Peak year 20161991
Best rank 310th girls66th girls
Rank in 2025 636th355th
First recorded 19911892
Girls / boys 11,675 / 7678,697 / 21,968

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 Ariels alive today are over 23; half the Ariahs are over 8. That is 15 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 Ariah Ariel
France 552,675
England and Wales 8171,008
Scotland 13211
Ireland 3827

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: Ariah and Ariel.