Humanverse

Letti vs Letty

American parents have registered 4,615 Lettys since 1880, against 599 Lettis. Letty is still ahead, with 158 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Letti against Letty, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Letti Letty

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

Letty 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 2021, when Letti had 58 and Letty had 122.

Side by side

  Letti Letty
Total US births 5994,615
Most in one year 58163
Babies in 2025 36158
Estimated living today 6003,100
Median age today 611
Peak year 20212016
Best rank 2,892nd girls1,420th girls
Rank in 2025 3,975th1,382nd
First recorded 19601880
Girls / boys 599 / 04,615 / 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 Lettys alive today are over 11; half the Lettis are over 6. That is 5 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 Letti Letty
England and Wales 52216
Scotland 34

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: Letti and Letty.