Lennon vs Leno

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Lennon Leno

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 114 years in which either name was published, Lennon for 89 years and Leno for 25 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

• 1909–1932 Leno ahead
• 1933 Lennon ahead
• 1934–1935 Leno ahead
• 1936–1958 Lennon ahead
• 1959 Leno ahead
• 1960–2025 Lennon ahead

Side by side

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 Lenos alive today are over 29; half the Lennons are over 6. That is 23 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.

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

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