Humanverse

Lance vs Landy

American parents have registered 106,184 Lances since 1880, against 861 Landys. Lance is still ahead, with 279 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lance against Landy, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lance Landy

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

Lance has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1899 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1931, when Lance had 24 and Landy had 10.

Side by side

  Lance Landy
Total US births 106,184861
Most in one year 4,17327
Babies in 2025 279under 5
Estimated living today 92,000690
Median age today 4542
Peak year 19701956
Best rank 76th boys1,511th boys
Rank in 2025 862ndunranked
First recorded 18991917
Girls / boys 345 / 105,839255 / 606

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 Lances alive today are over 45; half the Landys are over 42. That is 3 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

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

Country Lance Landy
France 5065

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: Lance and Landy.