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Nalani vs Nalaya

American parents have registered 7,954 Nalanis since 1880, against 617 Nalayas. Nalani is still ahead, with 754 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Nalani against Nalaya, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Nalani Nalaya

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

Nalani has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1946 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2014, when Nalani had 166 and Nalaya had 38.

Side by side

  Nalani Nalaya
Total US births 7,954617
Most in one year 75449
Babies in 2025 75438
Estimated living today 7,900610
Median age today 78
Peak year 20252021
Best rank 414th girls3,250th girls
Rank in 2025 414th3,832nd
First recorded 19462002
Girls / boys 7,954 / 0617 / 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.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Nalani Nalaya
England and Wales 1238

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: Nalani and Nalaya.