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Tanishia vs Tanya

American parents have registered 117,260 Tanyas since 1880, against 563 Tanishias. Tanya is still ahead, with 40 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Tanishia 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 1988, when Tanishia had 28 and Tanya had 1,513.

Side by side

  Tanishia Tanya
Total US births 563117,260
Most in one year 346,038
Babies in 2025 under 540
Estimated living today 540108,000
Median age today 4250
Peak year 19821974
Best rank 2,704th girls46th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked3,712th
First recorded 19701914
Girls / boys 563 / 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 Tanishias are over 42. That is 8 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 Tanishia Tanya
England and Wales 71,945

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: Tanishia and Tanya.