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Lindsey vs Lyndsey

American parents have registered 165,286 Lindseys since 1880, against 14,420 Lyndseys. Lindsey is still ahead, with 161 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lindsey Lyndsey

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

Lindsey 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 2012, when Lindsey had 589 and Lyndsey had 82.

Side by side

  Lindsey Lyndsey
Total US births 165,28614,420
Most in one year 9,119687
Babies in 2025 16114
Estimated living today 158,00014,000
Median age today 3634
Peak year 19841990
Best rank 35th girls384th girls
Rank in 2025 1,367th7,491st
First recorded 18801964
Girls / boys 157,551 / 7,73514,388 / 32

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 Lindseys alive today are over 36; half the Lyndseys are over 34. 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 Lindsey Lyndsey
Scotland 1,2561,374
France 1,82090
Ireland 384639
England and Wales 437200
Belgium 4446
Northern Ireland 422

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: Lindsey and Lyndsey.