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Lillie vs Lilyanna

American parents have registered 159,791 Lillies since 1880, against 5,065 Lilyannas. Lillie is still ahead, with 420 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lillie against Lilyanna, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lillie Lilyanna

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

Lillie 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 2016, when Lillie had 495 and Lilyanna had 267.

Side by side

  Lillie Lilyanna
Total US births 159,7915,065
Most in one year 3,277310
Babies in 2025 420126
Estimated living today 42,0005,000
Median age today 6712
Peak year 19192011
Best rank 81st girls848th girls
Rank in 2025 675th1,643rd
First recorded 18801990
Girls / boys 158,918 / 8735,065 / 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 Lillies alive today are over 67; half the Lilyannas are over 12. That is 55 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 Lillie Lilyanna
England and Wales 8,112162
Scotland 5543
Ireland 32920
France 18570
Northern Ireland 2307

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: Lillie and Lilyanna.