Humanverse

Neva vs Nevaeh

American parents have registered 98,924 Nevaehs since 1880, against 21,226 Nevas. Nevaeh is still ahead, with 1,828 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Neva against Nevaeh, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Neva Nevaeh

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, Neva for 120 years and Nevaeh for 26 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Neva Nevaeh
Total US births 21,22698,924
Most in one year 5586,856
Babies in 2025 471,828
Estimated living today 7,00098,000
Median age today 6314
Peak year 19202007
Best rank 276th girls31st girls
Rank in 2025 3,296th165th
First recorded 18801997
Girls / boys 21,220 / 698,497 / 427

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 Nevas alive today are over 63; half the Nevaehs are over 14. That is 49 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 Neva Nevaeh
England and Wales 1608,239
France 1,09070
Ireland 3416
Scotland 29199

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: Neva and Nevaeh.