Humanverse

Lua vs Luana

American parents have registered 4,893 Luanas since 1880, against 1,089 Luas. Luana is still ahead, with 110 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lua against Luana, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lua Luana

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 115 years in which either name was published, Luana for 110 years and Lua for 5 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

Side by side

  Lua Luana
Total US births 1,0894,893
Most in one year 114164
Babies in 2025 90110
Estimated living today 1,1003,800
Median age today 545
Peak year 20231947
Best rank 1,780th girls650th girls
Rank in 2025 2,076th1,818th
First recorded 19101911
Girls / boys 1,089 / 04,893 / 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 Luanas alive today are over 45; half the Luas are over 5. That is 40 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 Lua Luana
Switzerland 2314,521
France 3152,500
England and Wales 167621
Belgium 63681
Ireland 1616
Scotland 76

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: Lua and Luana.