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Lanae vs Laney

American parents have registered 14,360 Laneys since 1880, against 2,951 Lanaes. Laney is still ahead, with 421 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lanae against Laney, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lanae Laney

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 116 years in which either name was published, Laney for 79 years and Lanae for 37 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.

Side by side

  Lanae Laney
Total US births 2,95114,360
Most in one year 76640
Babies in 2025 32421
Estimated living today 2,80014,000
Median age today 3015
Peak year 20072006
Best rank 2,457th girls486th girls
Rank in 2025 4,352nd673rd
First recorded 19301883
Girls / boys 2,951 / 014,024 / 336

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 Lanaes alive today are over 30; half the Laneys are over 15. That is 15 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 Lanae Laney
England and Wales 36418

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: Lanae and Laney.