Humanverse

Len vs Lenora

American parents have registered 37,089 Lenoras since 1880, against 4,616 Lens. Lenora is still ahead, with 562 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Len Lenora

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

Lenora 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 1970, when Len had 119 and Lenora had 238.

Side by side

  Len Lenora
Total US births 4,61637,089
Most in one year 125678
Babies in 2025 8562
Estimated living today 2,70017,000
Median age today 6062
Peak year 19601924
Best rank 713th boys252nd girls
Rank in 2025 8,910th538th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 102 / 4,51437,058 / 31

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 Lenoras alive today are over 62; half the Lens are over 60. That is 2 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 Len Lenora
Belgium 69410
France 20335
England and Wales 2891

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: Len and Lenora.