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Lanaya vs Laney

American parents have registered 14,360 Laneys since 1880, against 1,435 Lanayas. Laney is still ahead, with 421 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lanaya 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

Laney has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1883 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1977, when Lanaya had 14 and Laney had 14.

Side by side

  Lanaya Laney
Total US births 1,43514,360
Most in one year 78640
Babies in 2025 8421
Estimated living today 1,40014,000
Median age today 1915
Peak year 20042006
Best rank 2,240th girls486th girls
Rank in 2025 10,917th673rd
First recorded 19441883
Girls / boys 1,435 / 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 Lanayas alive today are over 19; half the Laneys are over 15. That is 4 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 Lanaya Laney
England and Wales 27418

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: Lanaya and Laney.