Humanverse

Lily vs Lilyanna

American parents have registered 189,789 Lilys since 1880, against 5,065 Lilyannas. Lily is still ahead, with 6,673 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lily 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

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 Lily had 6,796 and Lilyanna had 304.

Side by side

  Lily Lilyanna
Total US births 189,7895,065
Most in one year 8,199310
Babies in 2025 6,673126
Estimated living today 176,0005,000
Median age today 1412
Peak year 20112011
Best rank 15th girls848th girls
Rank in 2025 18th1,643rd
First recorded 18801990
Girls / boys 189,644 / 1455,065 / 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 Lilys alive today are over 14; half the Lilyannas 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 Lily Lilyanna
England and Wales 75,092162
France 24,60570
Ireland 6,58020
Scotland 5,5733
Northern Ireland 2,3247
Poland 9092

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: Lily and Lilyanna.