Humanverse

Lilly vs Lilyana

American parents have registered 66,752 Lillys since 1880, against 9,872 Lilyanas. Lilly is still ahead, with 1,218 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lilly Lilyana

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 2023, when Lilly had 1,202 and Lilyana had 296.

Side by side

  Lilly Lilyana
Total US births 66,7529,872
Most in one year 2,891650
Babies in 2025 1,218237
Estimated living today 55,0009,800
Median age today 1412
Peak year 20102012
Best rank 106th girls472nd girls
Rank in 2025 252nd1,047th
First recorded 18801981
Girls / boys 66,728 / 249,872 / 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 Lillys alive today are over 14; half the Lilyanas are over 12. That is 2 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 Lilly Lilyana
England and Wales 22,050218
France 5,110375
Scotland 1,4193
Ireland 1,3026
Switzerland 1,22814
Belgium 1,1528
Poland 7823

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: Lilly and Lilyana.