Vana vs Vanessa

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Vana Vanessa

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 111 years in which either name was published, Vanessa for 109 years and Vana for 2 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

• 1900–1923 Vanessa ahead
• 1924 Vana ahead
• 1925–1933 Vanessa ahead
• 1934 Vana ahead
• 1935–2025 Vanessa ahead

Side by side

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 Vanas alive today are over 45; half the Vanessas are over 35. That is 10 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Vana California (9.9×)
• Vanessa California (2.4×), Arizona (2.2×), Nevada (2.1×)

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.

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

• Vana vs Van
• Vana vs Vance
• Vana vs Vanesa
• Vana vs Vannessa
• Vana vs Vania
• Vanessa vs Van
• Vanessa vs Vance
• Vanessa vs Vanesa