Humanverse

Vanessa vs Vansh

American parents have registered 262,606 Vanessas since 1880, against 718 Vanshes. Vanessa is still ahead, with 813 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Vanessa Vansh

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

Vanessa has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1900 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Vanessa had 813 and Vansh had 28.

Side by side

  Vanessa Vansh
Total US births 262,606718
Most in one year 7,60549
Babies in 2025 81328
Estimated living today 251,000710
Median age today 3512
Peak year 19852013
Best rank 42nd girls2,492nd boys
Rank in 2025 377th3,848th
First recorded 19002000
Girls / boys 261,622 / 9840 / 718

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 Vanessas alive today are over 35; half the Vanshes are over 12. That is 23 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 Vanessa Vansh
England and Wales 3,747241

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: Vanessa and Vansh.