Humanverse

Tana vs Taneesha

American parents have registered 9,280 Tanas since 1880, against 525 Taneeshas. Tana is still ahead, with 5 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Tana Taneesha

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

Tana has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1924 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1994, when Tana had 85 and Taneesha had 30.

Side by side

  Tana Taneesha
Total US births 9,280525
Most in one year 24132
Babies in 2025 5under 5
Estimated living today 8,200510
Median age today 5337
Peak year 19621991
Best rank 650th girls3,369th girls
Rank in 2025 14,942ndunranked
First recorded 19241972
Girls / boys 9,274 / 6525 / 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 Tanas alive today are over 53; half the Taneeshas are over 37. That is 16 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Tana Taneesha
England and Wales 4255

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: Tana and Taneesha.