Humanverse

Ashanti vs Asher

American parents have registered 112,690 Ashers since 1880, against 13,343 Ashantis. Asher is still ahead, with 7,519 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ashanti against Asher, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ashanti Asher

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

Of the 121 years in which either name was published, Asher for 93 years and Ashanti for 28 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Ashanti Asher
Total US births 13,343112,690
Most in one year 2,9698,527
Babies in 2025 897,519
Estimated living today 13,000111,000
Median age today 237
Peak year 20022022
Best rank 115th girls20th boys
Rank in 2025 2,099th28th
First recorded 19701880
Girls / boys 12,576 / 7671,463 / 111,227

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 Ashantis alive today are over 23; half the Ashers are over 7. That is 16 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 Ashanti Asher
England and Wales 6004,509
France 190200
Belgium 3270
Switzerland 2740
Poland 912

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: Ashanti and Asher.