Lamar
Lamar reached its high-water mark in 1989 at number 325, and has been recorded 35,251 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 1,514th. About 26,000 Lamars are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 39.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Lamar boys named Lamar
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 35,251
- Estimated living today
- 26,000
- Median age today
- 39
- Peak year
- 1989
- Best rank
- 325th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,514th
- First recorded
- 1882
- Girls / boys
- 1,284 / 33,967
How old the living Lamars are
born that year still alive today
Of the 35,251 babies given the name since 1882, about 26,000 are alive — 74 in every hundred. Roughly 4,700 of them are children and 3,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1986 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin a surname
From a placename in Normandy, which was derived from Old French la mare (“the pool”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Lamars
- Lamar Odom (born 1979)American basketball player
- Lamar Alexander (born 1940)American politician
- Lamar S. Smith (born 1947)American politician
- Lamar Jackson (born 1997)American football player
- Lamar Hunt (1932–2006)American sports executive
- Lamar Johnson (born 1994)Canadian actor and dancer
- Lamar Patterson (born 1991)American basketball player
People named Lamar with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Lamar is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Lamar is most concentrated in Georgia (4.6×), Mississippi (3.7×), Alabama (2.9×), Utah (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1989
The most popular boys’ names the year Lamar peaked:
Lamar elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Lamar | 337 | 509th |
| England and Wales girls | Lamar | 204 | 1,639th |
| France girls | Lamar | 115 | 2,194th |
| Belgium girls | Lamar | 66 | 711th |
| France boys | Lamar | 15 | 5,424th |
| Ireland girls | Lamar | 10 | 587th |
| Poland girls | Lamar | 3 birth registrations | 624th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Lamar: rank by region
In 2024, Lamar was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Lamar | 742 | 6 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Lamar by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 21 | 299th |
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 593rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Lamar among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Lamar | 31 | 32 |
| Finland boys | Lamar | — | 6 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Lamar against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.