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Lena vs Lendon

American parents have registered 146,805 Lenas since 1880, against 584 Lendons. Lena is still ahead, with 1,106 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lena against Lendon, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lena Lendon

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

Lena 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 1959, when Lena had 514 and Lendon had 11.

Side by side

  Lena Lendon
Total US births 146,805584
Most in one year 3,01515
Babies in 2025 1,106under 5
Estimated living today 53,000310
Median age today 3345
Peak year 19171939
Best rank 85th girls1,795th boys
Rank in 2025 279thunranked
First recorded 18801916
Girls / boys 146,479 / 3260 / 584

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 Lendons alive today are over 45; half the Lenas are over 33. That is 12 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 Lena Lendon
France 74,190 Léna105

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: Lena and Lendon.