Lily
About 189,789 American babies have been named Lily since 1880, most of them around 2011. In 2025 it ranked 18th. About 176,000 Lilys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 14.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Lily boys named Lily
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 189,789
- Estimated living today
- 176,000
- Median age today
- 14
- Peak year
- 2011
- Best rank
- 15th
- Rank in 2025
- 18th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 189,644 / 145
How old the living Lilys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 189,789 babies given the name since 1880, about 176,000 are alive — 93 in every hundred. Roughly 120,000 of them are children and 2,700 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2011 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 English
A 19th-century flower name, from lily. Also a diminutive of Lilian and sometimes Elizabeth.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Lilys
- Lily Allen (born 1985)British singer and actress
- Lily Collins (born 1989)British-American actress
- Lily Tomlin (born 1939)American actress
- Lily James (born 1989)English actress
- Lily Rabe (born 1982)American actress
- Lily Gladstone (born 1986)American actress
- Lily Cole (born 1987)English model and actress
- Lily Aldridge (born 1985)American model
People named Lily with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Lily is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Lily is most concentrated in Utah (2.3×), Hawaii (2.2×), Nevada (2.1×), Alaska (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2011
The most popular girls’ names the year Lily peaked:
Lily elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Lily | 75,089 | 3rd |
| France girls | Lily | 24,605 | 35th |
| Ireland girls | Lily | 6,580 | 5th |
| Scotland girls | Lily | 5,573 | 2nd |
| New Zealand girls | Lily | 4,517 | 6th |
| Belgium girls | Lily | 4,032 | 33rd |
| Denmark girls | Lily | 3,783 | 13th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Lily | 2,324 | 5th |
| Switzerland girls | Lily | 1,436 | 78th |
| Poland girls | Lily | 909 birth registrations | 146th |
| Norway girls | Lily | 843 | 90th |
| England and Wales boys | Lily | 3 | 4,647th |
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.
Lily: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Lily | 858 | 0.069% | 81st |
| French girls | Switzerland | Lily | 559 | 0.128% | 36th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Lily | 19 | 0.029% | 85th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Lily is most concentrated in Vaud, where 0.14% of children were given it – 236 of them.
Lily: rank by region
In 2025, Lily was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Lily | 29 | 121 |
| Wallonia | Lily | 42 | 61 |
| Brussels | Lily | 120 | 9 |
In 2025, Lily was given 2 times or more in 12 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Lily | 234 | 2 |
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Lily | 112 | 5 |
| Lubelskie | Lily | 98 | 7 |
| Łódzkie | Lily | 151 | 3 |
| Małopolskie | Lily | 194 | 3 |
| Mazowieckie | Lily | 187 | 7 |
| Podkarpackie | Lily | 105 | 7 |
| Pomorskie | Lily | 158 | 4 |
| Śląskie | Lily | 174 | 5 |
| Warmińsko-Mazurskie | Lily | 131 | 2 |
| Wielkopolskie | Lily | 248 | 2 |
| Zachodniopomorskie | Lily | 175 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Lily appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (16th), Province of Flemish Brabant (24th), Province of Namur (25th), Province of Luxembourg (30th), Province of East Flanders (34th), Province of Liège (38th), Province of Limburg (41st), Province of Walloon Brabant (42nd), Province of West Flanders (44th), Province of Hainaut (56th) and Brussels-Capital Region (120th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 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.
Lily by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 106 | 136th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Lily 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Lily | 1,650 | 2,482 |
| Finland girls | Lily | 766 | 1,070 |
| the Netherlands boys | Lily | — | 19 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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.
Where Lily lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 438 women called Lily were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balears, Illes | Lily | 29 | 0.046 | 1,377 |
| Barcelona | Lily | 109 | 0.036 | 1,488 |
| Málaga | Lily | 31 | 0.034 | 1,494 |
| Palmas, Las | Lily | 19 | 0.032 | 2,386 |
| Girona | Lily | 12 | 0.029 | 1,824 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Lily | 25 | 0.024 | 2,150 |
Listed in 18 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 34 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Lily 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.