Humanverse

Lisbeth vs Lissa

American parents have registered 5,934 Lisbeths since 1880, against 3,979 Lissas. Lisbeth is still ahead, with 24 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lisbeth against Lissa, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lisbeth Lissa

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 112 years in which either name was published, Lisbeth for 73 years and Lissa for 39 years. The lead changed hands 14 times.

10 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Lisbeth Lissa
Total US births 5,9343,979
Most in one year 409122
Babies in 2025 2412
Estimated living today 5,4003,600
Median age today 2653
Peak year 20021963
Best rank 624th girls959th girls
Rank in 2025 5,238th8,362nd
First recorded 19111923
Girls / boys 5,934 / 03,979 / 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 Lissas alive today are over 53; half the Lisbeths are over 26. That is 27 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 Lisbeth Lissa
France 625135
Belgium 5291
England and Wales 213

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: Lisbeth and Lissa.