9BabyNames Baby names with meanings & US popularity data

Van vs Olivia

How Van and Olivia compare across 146 years of US Social Security Administration baby-name records — popularity history, peak years, current rank, and which name overtook which.

Open Name Tournament

Van

Female · Vietnamese

Meaning: Cloud

Olivia

Female · Romanian

Meaning: Olive Tree

US Popularity History — Side-by-Side

Annual US births named Van (boys) vs Olivia (girls), from US Social Security Administration national records.

Source: US Social Security Administration. Names appearing fewer than 5 times per year are suppressed by SSA.

Quick Stats

Metric Van Olivia
Peak year (most US births) 2010 — 300 boys 2014 — 19,836 girls
Peak rank #754 #2
Most recent rank (2025) #972 (236 births) #1 (13,544 births)
Total US births since 1880 5,390 512,241
Last 10 years (2016–2025) 2,510 170,562

Peak comparison takeaway

At its all-time peak, Olivia reached 19,836 US births in 2014 — 19,536 more than Van's peak count.

Strongest States — Last 10 Years

States where each name ranked highest, from SSA's state-level dataset. Lower average rank = name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name list.

Van — top 5 states

#StateAvg rankBirths
1 Utah #380 119
2 Oregon #590 25
3 South Carolina #629 27
4 Colorado #684 60
5 Indiana #700 81

Olivia — top 5 states

#StateAvg rankBirths
1 Illinois #1 5,942
2 Washington #1 3,650
3 Connecticut #1 1,826
4 New York #1 9,099
5 Oklahoma #1 1,933

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Data & methodology

Source: US Social Security Administration national baby names dataset 1880–2025 (CC0 public domain). Names with fewer than 5 occurrences in a given year are suppressed by SSA. State-level coverage runs 1910–2025. Crossover detection compares annual birth counts (not ranks) for each year both names appear. Methodology: see full notes. More comparisons →