Humanverse

Lev vs Levin

American parents have registered 3,083 Levs since 1880, against 1,698 Levins. Lev is still ahead, with 236 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lev against Levin, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lev Levin

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 106 years in which either name was published, Levin for 78 years and Lev for 28 years. The lead changed hands 15 times.

13 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Lev Levin
Total US births 3,0831,698
Most in one year 23660
Babies in 2025 23641
Estimated living today 3,1001,400
Median age today 715
Peak year 20252011
Best rank 999th boys2,173rd boys
Rank in 2025 999th2,991st
First recorded 19711889
Girls / boys 84 / 2,9995 / 1,693

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 Levins alive today are over 15; half the Levs are over 7. That is 8 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 Lev Levin
Switzerland 974,515
England and Wales 28787
France 22060
Belgium 10817

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: Lev and Levin.