Humanverse

Ariel vs Ariona

American parents have registered 100,665 Ariels since 1880, against 949 Arionas. Ariel is still ahead, with 1,384 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ariel Ariona

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 2003, when Ariel had 1,935 and Ariona had 50.

Side by side

  Ariel Ariona
Total US births 100,665949
Most in one year 6,07757
Babies in 2025 1,384under 5
Estimated living today 98,000940
Median age today 2320
Peak year 19912007
Best rank 66th girls3,047th girls
Rank in 2025 355thunranked
First recorded 18921987
Girls / boys 78,697 / 21,968949 / 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 Ariels alive today are over 23; half the Arionas are over 20. That is 3 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 Ariel Ariona
England and Wales 1,0087

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: Ariel and Ariona.