Lavern
About 17,081 American babies have been named Lavern since 1880, most of them around 1924. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 4,050th. About 6,500 Laverns are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 67.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Lavern boys named Lavern
Girls and boys called Lavern
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Lavern crossed from girls to boys in 1979, having already crossed in 1909 and 1954, and has stayed there for 29 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% boys, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 99 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 17,081
- Estimated living today
- 6,500
- Median age today
- 67
- Peak year
- 1924
- Best rank
- 346th
- Rank in 2025
- 4,050th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 6,845 / 10,236
How old the living Laverns are
born that year still alive today
Of the 17,081 babies given the name since 1880, about 6,500 are alive — 38 in every hundred. Roughly 450 of them are children and 3,700 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1958 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
Variant of Laverne.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where Lavern is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Lavern is most concentrated in Nebraska (10.2×), Iowa (6.2×), South Dakota (5.5×), Wisconsin (5.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1924
The most popular boys’ names the year Lavern peaked:
Related names
Lavern 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.