Humanverse

Luca vs Lucy

American parents have registered 237,613 Lucys since 1880, against 79,211 Lucas. But in 2025 it was Luca that was commoner, 8,824 babies to 6,184.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Luca Lucy

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, Lucy for 139 years and Luca for 7 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Luca Lucy
Total US births 79,211237,613
Most in one year 8,8246,184
Babies in 2025 8,8246,184
Estimated living today 79,000135,000
Median age today 414
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 14th boys24th girls
Rank in 2025 14th24th
First recorded 19151880
Girls / boys 1,690 / 77,521236,969 / 644

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 Lucys alive today are over 14; half the Lucas are over 4. That is 10 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 Luca Lucy
England and Wales 33,83171,001
France 17,4859,505
Scotland 2,70711,417
Ireland 2,1969,634
Switzerland 10,5771,246
Belgium 7,9311,268
New Zealand 2,3015,773
Northern Ireland 8893,730
Norway 984317
Poland 440225

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: Luca and Lucy.