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Ava vs Avayah

American parents have registered 344,441 Avas since 1880, against 2,223 Avayahs. Ava is still ahead, with 7,739 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ava against Avayah, 1880 to 2025 0 5k 10k 15k 20k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ava Avayah

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

Ava has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2022, when Ava had 11,116 and Avayah had 321.

Side by side

  Ava Avayah
Total US births 344,4412,223
Most in one year 18,065321
Babies in 2025 7,739155
Estimated living today 335,0002,200
Median age today 124
Peak year 20072022
Best rank 4th girls865th girls
Rank in 2025 11th1,406th
First recorded 18802005
Girls / boys 344,097 / 3442,223 / 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 Avas alive today are over 12; half the Avayahs are over 4. That is 8 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 Ava Avayah
England and Wales 56,136236

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: Ava and Avayah.