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Ash vs Ashlyn

American parents have registered 48,093 Ashlyns since 1880, against 2,680 Ashes. Ashlyn is still ahead, with 262 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ash against Ashlyn, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ash Ashlyn

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

Ashlyn 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 2025, when Ash had 192 and Ashlyn had 262.

Side by side

  Ash Ashlyn
Total US births 2,68048,093
Most in one year 2212,544
Babies in 2025 192262
Estimated living today 2,70048,000
Median age today 620
Peak year 20232005
Best rank 1,064th boys127th girls
Rank in 2025 1,176th972nd
First recorded 19751963
Girls / boys 145 / 2,53548,039 / 54

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 Ashlyns alive today are over 20; half the Ashes are over 6. That is 14 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 Ash Ashlyn
England and Wales 444447
Scotland 3485
France 3515
Ireland 1418
Northern Ireland 33

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: Ash and Ashlyn.