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Luci vs Lucy

American parents have registered 237,613 Lucys since 1880, against 2,865 Lucis. Lucy is still ahead, with 6,184 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Luci against Lucy, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Luci 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

Lucy has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1966, when Luci had 78 and Lucy had 760.

Side by side

  Luci Lucy
Total US births 2,865237,613
Most in one year 956,184
Babies in 2025 596,184
Estimated living today 2,700135,000
Median age today 1914
Peak year 20102025
Best rank 2,077th girls24th girls
Rank in 2025 2,859th24th
First recorded 19371880
Girls / boys 2,865 / 0236,969 / 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 Lucis alive today are over 19; half the Lucys are over 14. That is 5 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 Luci Lucy
England and Wales 39971,001
Scotland 12411,417
France 109,505
Northern Ireland 73,730

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: Luci and Lucy.