Humanverse

Ariel vs Arisha

American parents have registered 100,665 Ariels since 1880, against 989 Arishas. Ariel is still ahead, with 1,384 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ariel Arisha

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 1972, when Ariel had 131 and Arisha had 5.

Side by side

  Ariel Arisha
Total US births 100,665989
Most in one year 6,07754
Babies in 2025 1,38449
Estimated living today 98,000980
Median age today 2311
Peak year 19912019
Best rank 66th girls3,002nd girls
Rank in 2025 355th3,211th
First recorded 18921972
Girls / boys 78,697 / 21,968989 / 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 Arishas are over 11. That is 12 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 Arisha
Italy 2,784200
France 2,67545
England and Wales 1,008737
Poland 4594
Switzerland 21218
Ireland 2719
Scotland 1110

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 Arisha.