Humanverse

Atharv vs Athena

American parents have registered 53,118 Athenas since 1880, against 2,385 Atharvs. Athena is still ahead, with 2,477 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Atharv Athena

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

Athena has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1902 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2020, when Atharv had 204 and Athena had 2,518.

Side by side

  Atharv Athena
Total US births 2,38553,118
Most in one year 2243,029
Babies in 2025 1872,477
Estimated living today 2,40051,000
Median age today 59
Peak year 20242022
Best rank 1,001st boys78th girls
Rank in 2025 1,132nd109th
First recorded 20001902
Girls / boys 0 / 2,38553,118 / 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 Athenas alive today are over 9; half the Atharvs are over 5. That is 4 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 Atharv Athena
England and Wales 3314,433
France 103,525 Athéna
Scotland 10132
Ireland 2749
Poland 616

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: Atharv and Athena.