Humanverse

Leonard vs Leonna

American parents have registered 295,746 Leonards since 1880, against 1,375 Leonnas. Leonard is still ahead, with 438 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Leonard against Leonna, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Leonard Leonna

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

Leonard 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 2009, when Leonard had 323 and Leonna had 49.

Side by side

  Leonard Leonna
Total US births 295,7461,375
Most in one year 5,67549
Babies in 2025 43828
Estimated living today 119,0001,300
Median age today 6418
Peak year 19212009
Best rank 39th boys3,361st girls
Rank in 2025 637th4,758th
First recorded 18801945
Girls / boys 1,412 / 294,3341,375 / 0

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 Leonards alive today are over 64; half the Leonnas are over 18. That is 46 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 Leonard Leonna
France 18,82590 Léonna
England and Wales 3,76257
Ireland 9233
Scotland 22929

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: Leonard and Leonna.