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Fannie vs Fanta

American parents have registered 85,949 Fannies since 1880, against 1,168 Fantas. Fannie is still ahead, with 46 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Fannie against Fanta, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Fannie Fanta

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

Fannie 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 2003, when Fannie had 45 and Fanta had 43.

Side by side

  Fannie Fanta
Total US births 85,9491,168
Most in one year 2,02766
Babies in 2025 4630
Estimated living today 14,0001,200
Median age today 7419
Peak year 19181977
Best rank 119th girls1,609th girls
Rank in 2025 3,342nd4,546th
First recorded 18801977
Girls / boys 85,580 / 3691,168 / 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 Fannies alive today are over 74; half the Fantas are over 19. That is 55 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 Fannie Fanta
France 1,1803,420
Belgium 538

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: Fannie and Fanta.