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Lincoln vs Linsey

American parents have registered 106,968 Lincolns since 1880, against 5,365 Linseys. Lincoln is still ahead, with 4,778 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lincoln Linsey

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

Of the 145 years in which either name was published, Lincoln for 131 years and Linsey for 14 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Lincoln Linsey
Total US births 106,9685,365
Most in one year 8,443296
Babies in 2025 4,7787
Estimated living today 102,0005,100
Median age today 836
Peak year 20171985
Best rank 41st boys631st girls
Rank in 2025 69th11,932nd
First recorded 18801904
Girls / boys 2,050 / 104,9185,125 / 240

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 Linseys alive today are over 36; half the Lincolns are over 8. That is 28 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 Lincoln Linsey
England and Wales 5,77341
Scotland 163658
France 140490
Ireland 10935
Belgium 1555

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: Lincoln and Linsey.