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Lacey vs Lachlan

American parents have registered 55,233 Laceys since 1880, against 6,398 Lachlans. But in 2025 it was Lachlan that was commoner, 477 babies to 370.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lacey against Lachlan, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lacey Lachlan

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

Of the 122 years in which either name was published, Lacey for 118 years and Lachlan for 4 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Lacey Lachlan
Total US births 55,2336,398
Most in one year 2,420477
Babies in 2025 370477
Estimated living today 53,0006,300
Median age today 348
Peak year 19842025
Best rank 116th girls606th boys
Rank in 2025 738th606th
First recorded 18861952
Girls / boys 53,774 / 1,459290 / 6,108

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 Laceys alive today are over 34; half the Lachlans are over 8. That is 26 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Lacey Lachlan
England and Wales 13,4632,417
Scotland 1,2771,494
Ireland 425212
Northern Ireland 29454

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: Lacey and Lachlan.