Humanverse

Lance vs Lanelle

American parents have registered 106,184 Lances since 1880, against 1,548 Lanelles. Lance is still ahead, with 279 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lance Lanelle

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 126 years in which either name was published, Lance for 120 years and Lanelle for 6 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.

8 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Lance Lanelle
Total US births 106,1841,548
Most in one year 4,17332
Babies in 2025 279under 5
Estimated living today 92,000870
Median age today 4555
Peak year 19701924
Best rank 76th boys1,475th girls
Rank in 2025 862ndunranked
First recorded 18991908
Girls / boys 345 / 105,8391,548 / 0

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 Lanelles alive today are over 55; half the Lances are over 45. That is 10 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 Lance Lanelle
England and Wales 6483

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 Lanelle.