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Anil

Boys' name

Multiple documented origins; meaning depends on tradition

Anil has been given to 1,160 babies in the U.S. since 1959. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1989, with 46 recorded.

Babies named Anil, 2024

1 in 478,000

Anil over time, 1880–2025

Boys
020406018801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Anil: meaning, origin, and history

Multiple documented origins; meaning depends on tradition

Dravidian languages, Indo-Aryan languages, Sanskrit and Turkish

What Anil means

Anil has more than one naming route in the cited origin entries: “hindu god of the wind” and “to remember; to commemorate”.

Dictionary etymologyReferences, data & attribution

Borrowed from Hindi अनिल (anil), Marathi अनिल (anil), Kannada ಅನಿಲ್ (anil), Tamil அனில் (aṉil), Malayalam അനിൽ (anil), Bengali অনিল (onil), Nepali अनिल (anil), Urdu اَنِیل (anīl), or Sinhalese අනිල් (anil), from Sanskrit अनिल (anila, “Hindu god of the wind”).

Excerpt from Wiktionary: Anil (English) · CC BY-SA 4.0

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Origin, language, and formation

Anil is used in English. Its origins include Dravidian languages, Indo-Aryan languages, Sanskrit and Turkish.

Anil comes through Hindi अनिल, Marathi अनिल, Kannada ಅನಿಲ್, Tamil அனில், Malayalam അനിൽ and Bengali অনিল.

Pronunciation and spelling

In English, Anil is pronounced /əˈnɪl/.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 1,160 boys were recorded with the name Anil between 1959 and 2024. Its highest annual count was 46 in 1989; its best national rank was #1,370 in 1974.

How common is Anil?

Anil had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2024, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2024
1 in 478,000
7 of 3,342,801 births
Among boys only
1 in 246,000
<0.01% of boys
Rank, 2024
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
331,009 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Anil sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Liam (20,818)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2024 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 331,009 children born in 2024 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Anil. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Anils were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Anil was born before 1986 — so the typical Anil is around 39 today.

Median birth year
1986
About 39 years old
Biggest decade
1980s
28.8% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
16.8%
Spread across generations
Recorded since 1950
1,160
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1980s — 28.8% of all recorded uses (334).

Is Anil rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1989 (46)
Years since peak
36
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
27.2% average annual change
Best rank ever
#1,370
1974

Spellings of Anil

Anil is not the most common spelling — Daniel is, with 66.2% against Anil's 0.04%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Anil is used

Across 1910–2025, Anil was most concentrated in New York — about 1 in 50,000 boys, against 1 in 187,449 across all states with data. It was least common in Texas (1 in —).

02 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1New York1 in 50,000
  2. 2California1 in —
  3. 3Illinois1 in —
  4. 4Indiana1 in —
  5. 5New Jersey1 in —
  6. 6Pennsylvania1 in —
  7. 7Texas1 in —

Shading is the share of that state's recorded boys given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Anil has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Anil around the world

Where Anil ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • England & Wales
    1996–2022
    #4,002
    in 2022
  • France
    1956–2025
    #1,607
    in 2025
  • Canada
    1991–2014
    #2,374
    in 2014
  • South Australia
    1982–2011
    #784
    in 2011

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, Statistics Canada and Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence. CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.

Anil by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a boy's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#1,370
1974
Peak year
1989
46 that year
First recorded
1959
Last recorded
2024
All-time count
1,160
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Anil

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

AnikAnisAnielAnishAniasAnirAnitaAnirudhAnibalAnicetoSunilDanilAnikoAniketAnivalAnielloAnivAnikenAnikethAnikinNilJenilAniruddhAniyis

Sibling names for Anil

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Anil

Top names of 1989, Anil's peak yearThe 1980s in fullOther names that peaked in 1974Boys' names starting with A