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Hanif vs Hans

American parents have registered 15,682 Hanses since 1880, against 784 Hanifs. Hans is still ahead, with 146 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Hanif Hans

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

Hans 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 2008, when Hanif had 29 and Hans had 108.

Side by side

  Hanif Hans
Total US births 78415,682
Most in one year 29271
Babies in 2025 8146
Estimated living today 76011,000
Median age today 2243
Peak year 20041970
Best rank 3,285th boys492nd boys
Rank in 2025 8,910th1,323rd
First recorded 19711880
Girls / boys 0 / 7845 / 15,677

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 Hanses alive today are over 43; half the Hanifs are over 22. That is 21 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 Hans
France 402,215
England and Wales 206212

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 Hans.