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Nakai vs Nakia

American parents have registered 10,744 Nakias since 1880, against 1,132 Nakais. But in 2025 it was Nakai that was commoner, 62 babies to 8.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Nakai Nakia

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 53 years in which either name was published, Nakia for 41 years and Nakai for 12 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Nakai Nakia
Total US births 1,13210,744
Most in one year 621,748
Babies in 2025 628
Estimated living today 1,10010,000
Median age today 1243
Peak year 20251974
Best rank 2,258th boys226th girls
Rank in 2025 2,258th10,917th
First recorded 19741973
Girls / boys 185 / 9478,738 / 2,006

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 Nakias alive today are over 43; half the Nakais are over 12. That is 31 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 Nakai Nakia
England and Wales 6010

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: Nakai and Nakia.