Humanverse

Leona vs Leonides

American parents have registered 113,624 Leonas since 1880, against 711 Leonideses. Leona is still ahead, with 723 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Leona against Leonides, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Leona Leonides

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

Leona 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 1993, when Leona had 89 and Leonides had 16.

Side by side

  Leona Leonides
Total US births 113,624711
Most in one year 3,34619
Babies in 2025 72311
Estimated living today 30,000620
Median age today 6128
Peak year 19182015
Best rank 79th girls5,289th boys
Rank in 2025 429th7,194th
First recorded 18801919
Girls / boys 113,330 / 29418 / 693

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 Leonas alive today are over 61; half the Leonideses are over 28. That is 33 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 Leona Leonides
England and Wales 2,3373

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: Leona and Leonides.