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Leonard vs Leonore

American parents have registered 295,746 Leonards since 1880, against 2,313 Leonores. Leonard is still ahead, with 438 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Leonard Leonore

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 1906, when Leonard had 498 and Leonore had 26.

Side by side

  Leonard Leonore
Total US births 295,7462,313
Most in one year 5,67570
Babies in 2025 4387
Estimated living today 119,000640
Median age today 6468
Peak year 19211928
Best rank 39th boys870th girls
Rank in 2025 637th11,932nd
First recorded 18801881
Girls / boys 1,412 / 294,3342,313 / 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 Leonores alive today are over 68; half the Leonards are over 64. That is 4 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 Leonore
France 18,8254,345 Léonore
England and Wales 3,76241
Switzerland 1,478242 Léonore
Belgium 706 Léonard514 Léonore

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 Leonore.