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Ariam vs Ariana

American parents have registered 120,580 Arianas since 1880, against 564 Ariams. Ariana is still ahead, with 2,219 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ariam Ariana

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

Ariana has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1957 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Ariam had 34 and Ariana had 2,219.

Side by side

  Ariam Ariana
Total US births 564120,580
Most in one year 425,514
Babies in 2025 342,219
Estimated living today 560119,000
Median age today 816
Peak year 20212014
Best rank 4,090th girls37th girls
Rank in 2025 5,099th128th
First recorded 19911957
Girls / boys 493 / 71120,380 / 200

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 Arianas alive today are over 16; half the Ariams are over 8. That is 8 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 Ariam Ariana
England and Wales 1666,108
France 401,605
Switzerland 1001,259

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: Ariam and Ariana.