Humanverse

Leva vs Levy

American parents have registered 4,256 Levys since 1880, against 823 Levas. Levy is still ahead, with 126 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Leva against Levy, 1880 to 2025 0 40 80 120 160 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Leva Levy

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 146 years in which either name was published, Levy for 136 years and Leva for 10 years. The lead changed hands 14 times.

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

Side by side

  Leva Levy
Total US births 8234,256
Most in one year 33153
Babies in 2025 7126
Estimated living today 1102,700
Median age today 7515
Peak year 19212021
Best rank 1,409th girls1,635th boys
Rank in 2025 11,932nd1,699th
First recorded 18831880
Girls / boys 823 / 0341 / 3,915

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 Levas alive today are over 75; half the Levys are over 15. That is 60 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 Leva Levy
France 10 Léva1,635

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: Leva and Levy.