Humanverse

Lila vs Lillyanna

American parents have registered 76,550 Lilas since 1880, against 3,370 Lillyannas. Lila is still ahead, with 1,670 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lila against Lillyanna, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lila Lillyanna

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

Lila 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 2001, when Lila had 394 and Lillyanna had 52.

Side by side

  Lila Lillyanna
Total US births 76,5503,370
Most in one year 1,969245
Babies in 2025 1,67051
Estimated living today 47,0003,300
Median age today 1512
Peak year 20102011
Best rank 155th girls1,019th girls
Rank in 2025 186th3,130th
First recorded 18801994
Girls / boys 76,493 / 573,370 / 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 Lilas alive today are over 15; half the Lillyannas are over 12. That is 3 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 Lila Lillyanna
France 19,4955
England and Wales 3,908130
Ireland 19510
Scotland 1976

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: Lila and Lillyanna.