Lona vs Lonny
American parents have registered 10,924 Lonas since 1880, against 6,413 Lonnys. Lona is still ahead, with 12 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Lona Lonny
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 146 years in which either name was published, Lona for 101 years and Lonny for 45 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.
- 1880–1947 Lona ahead
- 1953–1995 Lonny ahead, apart from 2 short spells
- 1996–2025 Lona ahead, apart from one short spell
7 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Lona | Lonny | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 10,924 | 6,413 |
| Most in one year | 198 | 213 |
| Babies in 2025 | 12 | 5 |
| Estimated living today | 4,200 | 4,700 |
| Median age today | 65 | 60 |
| Peak year | 1918 | 1957 |
| Best rank | 481st girls | 531st boys |
| Rank in 2025 | 8,362nd | 12,008th |
| First recorded | 1880 | 1920 |
| Girls / boys | 10,907 / 17 | 56 / 6,357 |
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 Lonas alive today are over 65; half the Lonnys are over 60. That is 5 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
- Lona West Virginia (7.7×), Kentucky (5.0×), North Carolina (3.0×)
- Lonny Minnesota (4.6×), Idaho (4.6×), Iowa (4.3×)
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 | Lona | Lonny |
|---|---|---|
| France | 565 | 545 |
| England and Wales | 90 | 3 |
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: Lona and Lonny.