Humanverse

Hanif vs Hank

American parents have registered 16,984 Hanks since 1880, against 784 Hanifs. Hank is still ahead, with 776 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Hanif against Hank, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Hanif Hank

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

Hank has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1908 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1996, when Hanif had 25 and Hank had 74.

Side by side

  Hanif Hank
Total US births 78416,984
Most in one year 29776
Babies in 2025 8776
Estimated living today 76015,000
Median age today 2211
Peak year 20042025
Best rank 3,285th boys413th boys
Rank in 2025 8,910th413th
First recorded 19711908
Girls / boys 0 / 7840 / 16,984

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 Hanifs alive today are over 22; half the Hanks are over 11. That is 11 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 Hanif Hank
England and Wales 20671

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: Hanif and Hank.