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Noel vs Noelani

American parents have registered 67,380 Noels since 1880, against 3,661 Noelanis. Noel is still ahead, with 792 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Noel against Noelani, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Noel Noelani

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

Noel has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2006, when Noel had 787 and Noelani had 146.

Side by side

  Noel Noelani
Total US births 67,3803,661
Most in one year 1,107146
Babies in 2025 792109
Estimated living today 54,0003,600
Median age today 3216
Peak year 20142006
Best rank 356th boys1,505th girls
Rank in 2025 478th1,833rd
First recorded 18801958
Girls / boys 15,284 / 52,0963,661 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Noels alive today are over 32; half the Noelanis are over 16. That is 16 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 Noel Noelani
France 51,870 Noël5
Switzerland 3,10047
England and Wales 1,9367

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: Noel and Noelani.