Lance
Lance is a boy's name that peaked in 1970, when it was the 76th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 862nd. About 92,000 Lances are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 45.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Lance boys named Lance
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 106,184
- Estimated living today
- 92,000
- Median age today
- 45
- Peak year
- 1970
- Best rank
- 76th
- Rank in 2025
- 862nd
- First recorded
- 1899
- Girls / boys
- 345 / 105,839
How old the living Lances are
born that year still alive today
Of the 106,184 babies given the name since 1899, about 92,000 are alive — 87 in every hundred. Roughly 7,900 of them are children and 10,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1980 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 Germanic languages
The surname is derived from a medieval given name Lanzo, short form of names beginning with the Germanic element *land; see land.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Lances
- Lance Armstrong (born 1971)cyclist from the United States
- Lance Stroll (born 1998)Canadian and Belgian racing driver
- Lance Henriksen (born 1940)American actor
- Lance Reddick (1962–2023)American actor
- Lance Bass (born 1979)American singer, dancer, actor, and film and television producer
- Lance Davids (born 1985)South African footballer
- Lance Stephenson (born 1990)American basketball player
- Lance Macklin (1919–2002)British racing driver
People named Lance with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Lance is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Lance is most concentrated in Hawaii (4.4×), South Dakota (2.4×), Utah (2.3×), Montana (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1970
The most popular boys’ names the year Lance peaked:
Lance elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand boys | Lance | 2,958 | 60th |
| England and Wales boys | Lance | 648 | 691st |
| Belgium boys | Lance | 74 | 730th |
| France boys | Lance | 50 | 6,921st |
| Scotland boys | Lance | 23 | 233rd |
| Ireland boys | Lance | 12 | 330th |
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.
Lance: rank by region
In 2005, Lance was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Lance | 506 | 9 |
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.
Lance 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 boys | Lance | 11 | 16 |
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
Lance 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.