Humanverse

Arial vs Arianna

American parents have registered 104,225 Ariannas since 1880, against 1,197 Arials. Arianna is still ahead, with 1,323 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Arial Arianna

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

Arianna has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1963 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1983, when Arial had 14 and Arianna had 137.

Side by side

  Arial Arianna
Total US births 1,197104,225
Most in one year 695,282
Babies in 2025 81,323
Estimated living today 1,200103,000
Median age today 2415
Peak year 19912014
Best rank 1,996th girls40th girls
Rank in 2025 10,917th234th
First recorded 19811963
Girls / boys 1,197 / 0104,152 / 73

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 Arials alive today are over 24; half the Ariannas are over 15. That is 9 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 Arial Arianna
England and Wales 42,712

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: Arial and Arianna.