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Luka vs Luke

American parents have registered 323,585 Lukes since 1880, against 29,522 Lukas. Luke is still ahead, with 6,957 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Luka against Luke, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Luka Luke

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

Luke 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 2025, when Luka had 3,898 and Luke had 6,957.

Side by side

  Luka Luke
Total US births 29,522323,585
Most in one year 3,89810,536
Babies in 2025 3,8986,957
Estimated living today 29,000310,000
Median age today 418
Peak year 20252014
Best rank 85th boys28th boys
Rank in 2025 85th33rd
First recorded 19751880
Girls / boys 563 / 28,959565 / 323,020

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 Lukes alive today are over 18; half the Lukas are over 4. That is 14 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 Luka Luke
England and Wales 3,60272,627
Ireland 46414,849
France 11,6651,815
New Zealand 5638,846
Scotland 2605,803
Northern Ireland 1113,064
Belgium 2,777145
Switzerland 2,088484
Norway 66540
Poland 47084

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: Luka and Luke.