Humanverse

Cavan vs Cavani

American parents have registered 1,714 Cavans since 1880, against 103 Cavanis. Cavan is still ahead, with 33 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Cavan against Cavani, 1880 to 2025 0 20 40 60 80 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Cavan Cavani

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

Cavan has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1969 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2020, when Cavan had 28 and Cavani had 14.

Side by side

  Cavan Cavani
Total US births 1,714103
Most in one year 7714
Babies in 2025 33under 5
Estimated living today 1,700100
Median age today 186
Peak year 20082018
Best rank 1,874th boys6,036th boys
Rank in 2025 3,450thunranked
First recorded 19692014
Girls / boys 0 / 1,7140 / 103

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 Cavans alive today are over 18; half the Cavanis are over 6. That is 12 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 Cavan Cavani
England and Wales 64134

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: Cavan and Cavani.