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Ayah vs Ayannah

American parents have registered 4,814 Ayahs since 1880, against 712 Ayannahs. Ayah is still ahead, with 309 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ayah against Ayannah, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ayah Ayannah

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

Ayah has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1986 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2000, when Ayah had 99 and Ayannah had 35.

Side by side

  Ayah Ayannah
Total US births 4,814712
Most in one year 30944
Babies in 2025 3097
Estimated living today 4,800710
Median age today 1018
Peak year 20252007
Best rank 869th girls3,653rd girls
Rank in 2025 869th11,932nd
First recorded 19861992
Girls / boys 4,809 / 5712 / 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 Ayannahs alive today are over 18; half the Ayahs are over 10. That is 8 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Ayah Ayannah
England and Wales 3,0276
France 1,455110

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: Ayah and Ayannah.