Humanverse

Lenita vs Lennon

American parents have registered 20,579 Lennons since 1880, against 1,178 Lenitas. Lennon is still ahead, with 1,729 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lenita against Lennon, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lenita Lennon

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 108 years in which either name was published, Lennon for 61 years and Lenita for 47 years. The lead changed hands 16 times.

10 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Lenita Lennon
Total US births 1,17820,579
Most in one year 381,730
Babies in 2025 under 51,729
Estimated living today 90020,000
Median age today 606
Peak year 19602025
Best rank 1,835th girls214th girls
Rank in 2025 unranked214th
First recorded 19191913
Girls / boys 1,178 / 012,576 / 8,003

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 Lenitas alive today are over 60; half the Lennons are over 6. That is 54 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 Lenita Lennon
France 15225

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: Lenita and Lennon.