Humanverse

Lisa vs Lyza

American parents have registered 970,012 Lisas since 1880, against 835 Lyzas. Lisa is still ahead, with 256 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lisa against Lyza, 1880 to 2025 0 20k 40k 60k 80k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lisa Lyza

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

Lisa has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1886 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2019, when Lisa had 277 and Lyza had 46.

Side by side

  Lisa Lyza
Total US births 970,012835
Most in one year 60,44846
Babies in 2025 25630
Estimated living today 876,000830
Median age today 5713
Peak year 19652019
Best rank 1st girls3,388th girls
Rank in 2025 987th4,546th
First recorded 18861972
Girls / boys 967,229 / 2,783835 / 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 Lisas alive today are over 57; half the Lyzas are over 13. That is 44 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 Lisa Lyza
France 70,270140
England and Wales 3,58323

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: Lisa and Lyza.