Humanverse

Lee vs Leevi

American parents have registered 295,926 Lees since 1880, against 812 Leevis. Lee is still ahead, with 387 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lee against Leevi, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lee Leevi

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

Lee has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2013, when Lee had 390 and Leevi had 57.

Side by side

  Lee Leevi
Total US births 295,926812
Most in one year 5,44857
Babies in 2025 38725
Estimated living today 163,000800
Median age today 5912
Peak year 19512013
Best rank 92nd boys2,250th boys
Rank in 2025 725th4,139th
First recorded 18801979
Girls / boys 62,299 / 233,6270 / 812

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 Lees alive today are over 59; half the Leevis are over 12. That is 47 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 Lee Leevi
England and Wales 7,94250

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: Lee and Leevi.