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Zander vs Zanyah

American parents have registered 28,786 Zanders since 1880, against 583 Zanyahs. Zander is still ahead, with 804 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Zander against Zanyah, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Zander Zanyah

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

Zander has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1915 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2000, when Zander had 150 and Zanyah had 9.

Side by side

  Zander Zanyah
Total US births 28,786583
Most in one year 1,60040
Babies in 2025 80414
Estimated living today 29,000580
Median age today 1113
Peak year 20132006
Best rank 230th boys3,795th girls
Rank in 2025 396th7,491st
First recorded 19152000
Girls / boys 36 / 28,750583 / 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 Zanyahs alive today are over 13; half the Zanders are over 11. That is 2 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 Zander Zanyah
England and Wales 1,01419 Za'nyah

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: Zander and Zanyah.