Humanverse

Lean vs Leann

American parents have registered 24,363 Leanns since 1880, against 892 Leans. Leann is still ahead, with 34 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lean Leann

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 105 years in which either name was published, Leann for 97 years and Lean for 8 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Lean Leann
Total US births 89224,363
Most in one year 27636
Babies in 2025 1634
Estimated living today 79022,000
Median age today 3650
Peak year 19851963
Best rank 3,246th girls383rd girls
Rank in 2025 unranked4,172nd
First recorded 19161925
Girls / boys 671 / 22124,356 / 7

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 Leanns alive today are over 50; half the Leans are over 36. That is 14 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 Lean Leann
France 120 Léan480
Ireland 22137

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: Lean and Leann.