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Liliana vs Lily

American parents have registered 189,789 Lilys since 1880, against 75,146 Lilianas. Lily is still ahead, with 6,673 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Liliana 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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Lily for 124 years and Liliana for 22 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Liliana Lily
Total US births 75,146189,789
Most in one year 3,1188,199
Babies in 2025 3,1186,673
Estimated living today 74,000176,000
Median age today 1314
Peak year 20252011
Best rank 78th girls15th girls
Rank in 2025 78th18th
First recorded 19501880
Girls / boys 74,990 / 156189,644 / 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 Liliana Lily
England and Wales 4,49875,092
Poland 43,172909
France 1,80524,605
Ireland 5056,580
Scotland 3045,573
Belgium 2754,032
Northern Ireland 932,324
Switzerland 4221,436
Norway 340843

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: Liliana and Lily.