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Haneef vs Hansel

American parents have registered 3,636 Hansels since 1880, against 573 Haneefs. Hansel is still ahead, with 103 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Haneef against Hansel, 1880 to 2025 0 40 80 120 160 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Haneef Hansel

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

Of the 115 years in which either name was published, Hansel for 111 years and Haneef for 4 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Haneef Hansel
Total US births 5733,636
Most in one year 24134
Babies in 2025 10103
Estimated living today 5602,500
Median age today 2213
Peak year 20052021
Best rank 3,815th boys1,372nd boys
Rank in 2025 7,679th1,634th
First recorded 19771905
Girls / boys 0 / 5735 / 3,631

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 Haneefs alive today are over 22; half the Hansels are over 13. That is 9 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 Haneef Hansel
England and Wales 6682

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: Haneef and Hansel.