Humanverse

Zana vs Zanya

American parents have registered 2,288 Zanas since 1880, against 619 Zanyas. Zana is still ahead, with 27 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Zana against Zanya, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Zana Zanya

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 127 years in which either name was published, Zana for 116 years and Zanya for 11 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Zana Zanya
Total US births 2,288619
Most in one year 25252
Babies in 2025 278
Estimated living today 1,800610
Median age today 3116
Peak year 19942009
Best rank 802nd girls3,189th girls
Rank in 2025 4,878th10,917th
First recorded 18821998
Girls / boys 2,288 / 0619 / 0

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 Zanas alive today are over 31; half the Zanyas are over 16. That is 15 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 Zana Zanya
England and Wales 2073

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: Zana and Zanya.