Humanverse

Lindsay vs Linsay

American parents have registered 135,501 Lindsays since 1880, against 673 Linsays. Lindsay is still ahead, with 84 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lindsay Linsay

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

Lindsay 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 2015, when Lindsay had 337 and Linsay had 6.

Side by side

  Lindsay Linsay
Total US births 135,501673
Most in one year 8,71350
Babies in 2025 84under 5
Estimated living today 129,000660
Median age today 3838
Peak year 19831984
Best rank 36th girls2,018th girls
Rank in 2025 2,194thunranked
First recorded 18801976
Girls / boys 130,365 / 5,136673 / 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.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Lindsay Linsay
France 9,050785
Scotland 3,023192

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: Lindsay and Linsay.