Ava, Hannah, Anna: the names that read the same backwards

Ava reads the same backwards. So do Hannah, Anna, Ada, Eve, Elle and Otto. We ran that test on every name in every file we hold, 1880 to 2025, and the answer has a shape. In 1884 one American girl in 27 had a palindrome for a name. In 1952 it was one girl in 350. In 2005 it was one in 44, and in England and Wales last year it was one in 61. Boys almost never get one, and in 1986 one American boy in 19,000 did.

Three names did nearly all of it, one after the other. Anna was the second most popular girls' name in America every year from 1880 to 1899. Hannah was second from 1998 to 2000. Ava was fourth in 2007 and third from 2016 to 2020. Nothing like that has happened to a boys' name.

How we counted

A palindrome, for this article, is a first name of three letters or more, spelled as it was registered, that reads the same backwards once you ignore capitals and hyphens. That is the whole rule. There is no hand-picked list and no judgement: the test runs on every name in each file, so Bob, Nan, Eevee and Pip count alongside Ava. Boys and girls are counted from their own lists in the official files, never from our own gender label. The long American series, 1880 to 2008, covers the top 1,000 names each year, so every figure from it is a floor. The full American files, which list every name given to five or more babies, cover 1990 to 2010 and the 2017 counts, the newest American counts we hold, and the American rankings run to 2025.

1884: Anna

The Social Security Administration's records open in 1880 with Anna as the second most popular girls' name in America, behind Mary, and it stayed second for twenty years. In 1884, the record year, 2.8% of American girls were called Anna, 0.6% were called Ada and 0.2% Hannah. Ten palindromes sat in the top 1,000 that year, and between them they had 3.7% of girls: one in 27. Ada was 33rd in 1880 and Hannah 96th. Ava was 466th.

Then all three fell, for most of a century. Anna was 10th in 1920, 51st in 1940 and 101st in 1952. Ada was 136th in 1920, 909th in 1980 and then outside the top 1,000 altogether. Hannah reached 926th in 1960. The share of American girls with a palindrome name went under 1% in 1929 and reached its low in 1952, 0.29%, one girl in 350, nearly all of it Anna. Seven palindromes were left in the top 1,000 and the biggest was 101st.

Hannah, then Ava

Hannah came first. It was 213th in 1980, 117th in 1985, passed Anna as the biggest palindrome in 1989, was 30th in 1990, and from 1998 to 2000 it was the second most popular girls' name in America, behind Emily. In 2000 it went to 1.16% of girls, one in 86, and the palindromes together had 2.18% of girls in the full file for that year, one in 46. The group had gone under 1% in 1929 and did not get back above it until 1990.

Ava came from further back and faster. It was outside the top 1,000 in 1980, 951st in 1990 and 180th in 2000. Then 82nd in 2002, 25th in 2004, 9th in 2005, 5th in 2006 and 4th in 2007, when 0.86% of American girls got it. It passed Hannah in 2006. The group's best year in the full files is 2005, when Hannah and Ava were both in the top ten at the same time: 42,085 girls, 2.28%, one in 44. Counted the same way as the long series, top 1,000 names only, 2005 is the highest year since 1908.

In 2017, the newest full count we hold, 31,583 American girls got a palindrome name, one in 54, across 91 different spellings. Half of them were Ava, 15,902. Then Hannah 5,872, Anna 4,520, Ana 1,443, Ada 1,009, Elle 828, Eve 727 and Aya 344. The rankings since then say the wave has passed its top. Ava was 3rd every year from 2016 to 2020 and is 11th in 2025. Hannah went from 28th to 56th and Anna from 44th to 107th. The ones going the other way are Ada, 356th in 2015 and 219th now, and Aya, 892nd to 644th. The same eight palindromes have been in the American girls' top 1,000 in every year since 2015, and no others.

Boys: Otto, Bob and Asa

Boys have had three palindromes worth the name in 146 years. In 1880 Otto was 63rd, with 0.23% of American boys, and Asa and Bob were 200th and 244th. That was one boy in 305; the boys' record is 1891, one in 275. Otto led until 1919 and then slid, 206th in 1920, 380th in 1940, 656th in 1960, and out of the top 1,000 after 1970. Bob led from 1920 to 1979 and had its best year in 1934, 75th, 0.23% of boys, when a first name on the birth certificate that was really a nickname was not unusual. By 1980 Bob was 847th and Asa, at 751st, was the only palindrome left.

For the whole of 1985 to 2008 Asa was the only boys' palindrome in the American top 1,000, and in 1986 it had 0.0053% of boys. That is one boy in 19,000, against one girl in 164 the same year. The full files put a floor under it: in 1990 one American boy in 4,257 had a palindrome name (Asa 161, Otto 73, Bob 53), and in 2017 it was one in 1,157, Otto 612 and Asa 588, with Natan 65 a long way behind. Otto has come back into the rankings, 544th in 2015 and 277th in 2025, and Asa is 483rd. Those two are the only boys' palindromes in the American top 1,000 in any year since 2015, against eight for girls.

Put the two sexes side by side and the gap is the finding. In 1880 there were eleven palindrome girls for every palindrome boy. In 1986 there were 122. In 2017, per head, there were 21.

Why girls

A palindrome has to begin and end with the same letter, and that is where the gap comes from. We showed in one article that A is the commonest first letter for American girls, 18% of them in 2017, and in another that A is the commonest last letter, 38%. For boys the commonest first letter is J and the commonest last letter is N, and a palindrome cannot use both. So in 2017 one American girl in nine had a name that began and ended with the same letter (Ava, Amelia, Aria, Hannah, Ellie, Aurora) and one boy in 33 (David, Nathan, Nolan, Silas, Ryder). In England and Wales it is one girl in six and one boy in 49. Three quarters of America's palindrome girls have a name beginning with A, and more than four fifths of Britain's. The boys' palindromes are Otto, Asa, Bob, and a handful of N names: Natan, Nayan, Naman, Nivin, Neven.

That is not a reason anyone picks a name. Whether a single parent chose Ava because it is symmetrical is not something the files can tell. It is why the pool of names girls could get a palindrome from is so much bigger than the boys', and the pool is what the three waves were drawn from.

Britain: Ava, and Ada

The Office for National Statistics counted 253,281 girls born in England and Wales in 2025. 4,126 of them, 1.63%, one in 61, got a palindrome name, across 30 spellings. Ava is 11th with 1,611 girls and is 39% of them. Then Ada 40th with 1,014, Hannah 105th with 439, Anna 142nd with 347, Aya 221st with 212, Eve 287th with 159, Ana 439th with 91 and Elle 634th with 61. Further down, 16 girls were registered as Eevee and four as Non. The 2024 file says the same thing, one girl in 58, with Ava 9th.

Boys: 643 of 273,652, one in 426, and 444 of those are Otto, 117th. Asa went to 83 boys, Natan to 43, Efe to 14 and Pip to nine. Britain gives boys a palindrome nearly three times as often as America does, one in 426 against one in 1,157, and that is Otto: 4.4 times commoner here per head, 444 boys against 612 in a country with six times the births. For girls it is the other way, one in 61 here against one in 54 there, and that is Ava, 1.6 times commoner in America. Hannah and Anna are both about twice as common there.

Britain's own palindrome is Ada. It is 40th here and 219th in America, 6.1 times commoner per head, 1,014 girls against 1,009 in a country six times the size. Aya is 3.8 times commoner here, Natan four times, Eve 1.3 times. Ana, which is 2.6 times commoner in America, is the one America has and we do not.

What we cannot tell you

Why. The files say what parents wrote, not why. Whether Ava, Hannah and Anna rose and fell because of anything they have in common is not something a count can show, and we do not claim it. Nor can we say what Britain did before 2024: we hold two years of the ONS file, and they agree with each other. The long American series counts only the top 1,000 names each year, so the 1952 low and the 1986 low are both floors. The full file for 1990 puts the boys at one in 4,257 rather than one in 19,000, and the truth for 1986 is somewhere near that. And the fall of Ava since 2020 is in the rankings only; we hold no American count newer than 2017.

What it means for you

If you want a name that reads the same both ways, you have a short list, and the files say which way each one is going. Ava is the big one and is falling in both countries. Ada is climbing in America and already 40th here. Aya is climbing in both. Hannah and Anna are going down in both countries. For a boy there are two, and Otto is the one on the way up: 277th in America from 544th ten years ago, 117th here. Asa is the other. Everything else, Bob, Nan, Pip and the rest, is yours alone.

Every palindrome in the top 1,000 of either country, in order of its rank in England and Wales. Counts are girls for the girls' names and boys for the boys'. The American rank is for 2025; the American count is for 2017. Sources: ONS 2025, SSA 2025 rankings, SSA 2017 counts.