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Taniesha vs Tanya

American parents have registered 117,260 Tanyas since 1880, against 775 Tanieshas. Tanya is still ahead, with 40 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Taniesha Tanya

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

Tanya has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1914 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1991, when Taniesha had 51 and Tanya had 1,114.

Side by side

  Taniesha Tanya
Total US births 775117,260
Most in one year 516,038
Babies in 2025 under 540
Estimated living today 750108,000
Median age today 3750
Peak year 19911974
Best rank 2,449th girls46th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked3,712th
First recorded 19711914
Girls / boys 775 / 0116,855 / 405

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 Tanyas alive today are over 50; half the Tanieshas are over 37. That is 13 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 Taniesha Tanya
England and Wales 241,945

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: Taniesha and Tanya.