Humanverse

Lilliana vs Lilly

American parents have registered 66,752 Lillys since 1880, against 22,826 Lillianas. Lilly is still ahead, with 1,218 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lilliana Lilly

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

Lilly 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 1983, when Lilliana had 44 and Lilly had 51.

Side by side

  Lilliana Lilly
Total US births 22,82666,752
Most in one year 1,2302,891
Babies in 2025 6951,218
Estimated living today 23,00055,000
Median age today 1114
Peak year 20132010
Best rank 262nd girls106th girls
Rank in 2025 445th252nd
First recorded 19551880
Girls / boys 22,826 / 066,728 / 24

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 Lillys alive today are over 14; half the Lillianas are over 11. 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 Lilliana Lilly
England and Wales 61322,050
France 305,110
Scotland 61,419
Ireland 121,302
Poland 59782

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: Lilliana and Lilly.