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Naia vs Nairobi

American parents have registered 2,228 Naias since 1880, against 1,596 Nairobis. Naia is still ahead, with 133 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Naia Nairobi

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 42 years in which either name was published, Naia for 24 years and Nairobi for 18 years. The lead changed hands 9 times.

Side by side

  Naia Nairobi
Total US births 2,2281,596
Most in one year 143242
Babies in 2025 133106
Estimated living today 2,2001,600
Median age today 104
Peak year 20232021
Best rank 1,506th girls1,042nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,581st1,867th
First recorded 19821971
Girls / boys 2,228 / 01,561 / 35

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 Naias alive today are over 10; half the Nairobis are over 4. That is 6 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 Naia Nairobi
France 3,655 Naïa10
England and Wales 47828

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: Naia and Nairobi.