Humanverse

Lew vs Lewie

American parents have registered 2,208 Lews since 1880, against 870 Lewies. Lew is still ahead, with 5 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lew against Lewie, 1880 to 2025 0 15 30 45 60 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lew Lewie

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 116 years in which either name was published, Lew for 109 years and Lewie for 7 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.

Side by side

  Lew Lewie
Total US births 2,208870
Most in one year 5925
Babies in 2025 5under 5
Estimated living today 870240
Median age today 6671
Peak year 19591937
Best rank 1,034th boys1,344th boys
Rank in 2025 12,008thunranked
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 15 / 2,1930 / 870

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 Lewies alive today are over 71; half the Lews are over 66. That is 5 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 Lew Lewie
England and Wales 3720

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: Lew and Lewie.