Humanverse

Lillyanna vs Lily

American parents have registered 189,789 Lilys since 1880, against 3,370 Lillyannas. Lily is still ahead, with 6,673 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lillyanna 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

Lily 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 2014, when Lillyanna had 223 and Lily had 6,796.

Side by side

  Lillyanna Lily
Total US births 3,370189,789
Most in one year 2458,199
Babies in 2025 516,673
Estimated living today 3,300176,000
Median age today 1214
Peak year 20112011
Best rank 1,019th girls15th girls
Rank in 2025 3,130th18th
First recorded 19941880
Girls / boys 3,370 / 0189,644 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Lilys alive today are over 14; half the Lillyannas 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 Lillyanna Lily
England and Wales 13075,092
France 524,605
Ireland 106,580
Scotland 65,573

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: Lillyanna and Lily.