Humanverse

Yancy vs Yanis

American parents have registered 2,951 Yancys since 1880, against 808 Yanises. But in 2025 it was Yanis that was commoner, 52 babies to 6.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Yancy against Yanis, 1880 to 2025 0 40 80 120 160 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Yancy Yanis

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 113 years in which either name was published, Yancy for 97 years and Yanis for 16 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Yancy Yanis
Total US births 2,951808
Most in one year 12381
Babies in 2025 652
Estimated living today 2,400800
Median age today 446
Peak year 19592021
Best rank 686th boys2,109th boys
Rank in 2025 10,695th2,539th
First recorded 18861998
Girls / boys 518 / 2,433134 / 674

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 Yancys alive today are over 44; half the Yanises are over 6. That is 38 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 Yancy Yanis
France 1566,470

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: Yancy and Yanis.