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Girls' name · 218,423 recorded births

Anita

#1,341 in the US in 2025

Where Anita stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#1,341girls’ names · US 2025

Anita was the 1,341st most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 165 births.

peak 1957 · 5,811188019532025

Its moment was 1957, when 5,811 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#1,341US rank, 2025 (girls)
165US births in 2025
#77its best US rank, in 1963
1957peak year — 5,811 births
215,165US births since 1880
3,118NZ births since 1921
140E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Anita's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Anita was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Anita in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0144287
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Anita in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Anita in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Anita has been registered 3,118 times since 1921, peaking in 1977 with 101 births. It did not clear the DIA's 10-birth reporting floor in 2025.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.0259518
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Anita in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Anita in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Anita was registered 140 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2022 with 27 births. It ranked #2,277 for girls in 2025 on 12 births. Across those years it has been falling.

2020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 3-BIRTH FLOOR0.05.110
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Anita in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#42116
1890#30168
1900#242176
1910#195338
1920#1311,934
1930#1152,183
1940#872,828
1950#993,572
1960#875,637
1970#1272,895
1980#2231,151
1990#404642
2000#736314
2010#1,348174
2020#1,533138

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Anita most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California18,245
New York17,996
Texas17,718
Illinois11,398
Pennsylvania10,755
Ohio10,343
Michigan6,987
Indiana6,257
North Carolina5,919
Tennessee5,340

Questions about Anita

How popular is the name Anita?

Anita ranked #1,341 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 165 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Anita most popular?

Anita peaked in 1957, when 5,811 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Anita rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Anita has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1957, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.