Humanverse

Lilian vs Liliana

American parents have registered 75,146 Lilianas since 1880, against 20,470 Lilians. Liliana is still ahead, with 3,118 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lilian against Liliana, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lilian Liliana

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, Lilian for 84 years and Liliana for 62 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Lilian Liliana
Total US births 20,47075,146
Most in one year 7863,118
Babies in 2025 5373,118
Estimated living today 18,00074,000
Median age today 1613
Peak year 20072025
Best rank 416th girls78th girls
Rank in 2025 560th78th
First recorded 18801950
Girls / boys 20,470 / 074,990 / 156

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 Lilians alive today are over 16; half the Lilianas are over 13. 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 Lilian Liliana
Poland 7043,172
France 27,2451,805
England and Wales 1,9014,498
Ireland 317505
Switzerland 326422
Belgium 459275
Norway 191340
Scotland 111304

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: Lilian and Liliana.