Humanverse

Lilee vs Lily

American parents have registered 189,789 Lilys since 1880, against 957 Lilees. Lily is still ahead, with 6,673 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lilee against Lily, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lilee Lily

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

Lily 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 2013, when Lilee had 72 and Lily had 7,009.

Side by side

  Lilee Lily
Total US births 957189,789
Most in one year 728,199
Babies in 2025 176,673
Estimated living today 950176,000
Median age today 1414
Peak year 20132011
Best rank 2,484th girls15th girls
Rank in 2025 6,546th18th
First recorded 19971880
Girls / boys 957 / 0189,644 / 145

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.

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 Lilee Lily
England and Wales 4775,092

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: Lilee and Lily.