Humanverse

Jane vs Janea

American parents have registered 381,009 Janes since 1880, against 2,027 Janeas. Jane is still ahead, with 1,380 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jane against Janea, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jane Janea

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

Jane 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 1993, when Jane had 691 and Janea had 76.

Side by side

  Jane Janea
Total US births 381,0092,027
Most in one year 9,96176
Babies in 2025 1,3805
Estimated living today 207,0002,000
Median age today 6931
Peak year 19471993
Best rank 36th girls1,865th girls
Rank in 2025 221st14,942nd
First recorded 18801953
Girls / boys 379,876 / 1,1332,027 / 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 Janes alive today are over 69; half the Janeas are over 31. That is 38 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 Jane Janea
France 8,58520 Janéa
Switzerland 15622

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: Jane and Janea.