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Jania vs Janie

American parents have registered 75,874 Janies since 1880, against 3,021 Janias. Janie is still ahead, with 168 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Jania against Janie, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Jania Janie

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, Janie for 144 years and Jania for 2 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Jania Janie
Total US births 3,02175,874
Most in one year 1941,853
Babies in 2025 20168
Estimated living today 3,00042,000
Median age today 2066
Peak year 20051947
Best rank 1,185th girls161st girls
Rank in 2025 5,917th1,326th
First recorded 19521880
Girls / boys 3,021 / 075,598 / 276

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 Janies alive today are over 66; half the Janias are over 20. That is 46 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 Jania Janie
France 10850
England and Wales 3135

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: Jania and Janie.