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Lucas vs Lucian

American parents have registered 331,628 Lucases since 1880, against 14,501 Lucians. Lucas is still ahead, with 10,228 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lucas against Lucian, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lucas Lucian

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, Lucian for 78 years and Lucas for 68 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Lucas Lucian
Total US births 331,62814,501
Most in one year 13,044670
Babies in 2025 10,228670
Estimated living today 324,00011,000
Median age today 1311
Peak year 20172025
Best rank 11th boys462nd boys
Rank in 2025 10th462nd
First recorded 18811880
Girls / boys 536 / 331,09232 / 14,469

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 Lucases alive today are over 13; half the Lucians are over 11. That is 2 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 Lucas Lucian
France 188,095950
England and Wales 50,4421,669
Belgium 16,08493
Scotland 5,19522
Switzerland 3,968128
Ireland 2,17817
Northern Ireland 1,4605
Poland 63226

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: Lucas and Lucian.