Humanverse

Tanita vs Tanner

American parents have registered 100,166 Tanners since 1880, against 607 Tanitas. Tanner is still ahead, with 684 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Tanita against Tanner, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Tanita Tanner

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 75 years in which either name was published, Tanner for 69 years and Tanita for 6 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Tanita Tanner
Total US births 607100,166
Most in one year 354,827
Babies in 2025 under 5684
Estimated living today 58098,000
Median age today 4524
Peak year 19801998
Best rank 2,651st girls82nd boys
Rank in 2025 unranked475th
First recorded 19611913
Girls / boys 607 / 02,541 / 97,625

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 Tanitas alive today are over 45; half the Tanners are over 24. That is 21 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 Tanita Tanner
England and Wales 13219

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: Tanita and Tanner.