Laney vs Lanie
American parents have registered 14,360 Laneys since 1880, against 5,637 Lanies. Laney is still ahead, with 421 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Laney Lanie
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 140 years in which either name was published, Laney for 71 years and Lanie for 69 years. The lead changed hands 23 times.
- 1880–1933 Lanie ahead, apart from 2 short spells
- 1937–1941 Laney ahead
- 1942–1945 Lanie ahead
- 1946–1965 Laney ahead, apart from one short spell
- 1966–1980 Lanie ahead
- 1984–2025 Laney ahead, apart from one short spell
14 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Laney | Lanie | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 14,360 | 5,637 |
| Most in one year | 640 | 225 |
| Babies in 2025 | 421 | 83 |
| Estimated living today | 14,000 | 5,000 |
| Median age today | 15 | 19 |
| Peak year | 2006 | 2006 |
| Best rank | 486th girls | 1,110th girls |
| Rank in 2025 | 673rd | 2,214th |
| First recorded | 1883 | 1880 |
| Girls / boys | 14,024 / 336 | 5,602 / 35 |
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 Lanies 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
- Laney Oklahoma (2.6×), Arkansas (2.3×), Missouri (1.9×)
- Lanie Louisiana (6.1×), Oklahoma (2.9×), North Carolina (2.7×)
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 | Laney | Lanie |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 418 | 75 |
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: Laney and Lanie.