Humanverse

Lancelot vs Landon

American parents have registered 187,785 Landons since 1880, against 638 Lancelots. Landon is still ahead, with 2,868 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lancelot against Landon, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lancelot Landon

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

Landon has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1882 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1908, when Lancelot had 5 and Landon had 5.

Side by side

  Lancelot Landon
Total US births 638187,785
Most in one year 1810,510
Babies in 2025 122,868
Estimated living today 560184,000
Median age today 2914
Peak year 19842010
Best rank 2,613th boys33rd boys
Rank in 2025 6,803rd127th
First recorded 19081882
Girls / boys 0 / 6381,182 / 186,603

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 Lancelots alive today are over 29; half the Landons are over 14. That is 15 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 Lancelot Landon
France 1,64075
England and Wales 16530

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: Lancelot and Landon.