Humanverse

Ike vs Ikenna

American parents have registered 7,342 Ikes since 1880, against 728 Ikennas. Ike is still ahead, with 55 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ike against Ikenna, 1880 to 2025 0 30 60 90 120 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ike Ikenna

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 146 years in which either name was published, Ike for 145 years and Ikenna for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Ike Ikenna
Total US births 7,342728
Most in one year 11126
Babies in 2025 5514
Estimated living today 3,500710
Median age today 3721
Peak year 19532003
Best rank 680th boys3,443rd boys
Rank in 2025 2,451st6,143rd
First recorded 18801978
Girls / boys 0 / 7,3420 / 728

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 Ikes alive today are over 37; half the Ikennas are over 21. That is 16 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 Ike Ikenna
England and Wales 135191
France 510

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: Ike and Ikenna.