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Maia vs Maya

American parents have registered 123,750 Mayas since 1880, against 18,200 Maias. Maya is still ahead, with 3,712 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Maia against Maya, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Maia Maya

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

Maya has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1940 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1963, when Maia had 22 and Maya had 23.

Side by side

  Maia Maya
Total US births 18,200123,750
Most in one year 7525,053
Babies in 2025 7153,712
Estimated living today 18,000122,000
Median age today 1515
Peak year 20222006
Best rank 420th girls57th girls
Rank in 2025 433rd62nd
First recorded 19501940
Girls / boys 18,200 / 0123,587 / 163

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.

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 Maia Maya
England and Wales 6,45127,704
France 8,56518,550
Italy 2,6857,774
Poland 3224,099
Belgium 500 Maïa3,055
Norway 1,2282,125
New Zealand 2,461663
Scotland 6112,175
Ireland 6322,102
Switzerland 3231,775
Northern Ireland 198491

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: Maia and Maya.