Lindsay
Lindsay is a girl's name that peaked in 1983, when it was the 36th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 2,194th. About 129,000 Lindsays are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 38.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Lindsay boys named Lindsay
Girls and boys called Lindsay
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Lindsay crossed from boys to girls in 1966, and has stayed there for 60 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 113 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
- 135,501
- Estimated living today
- 129,000
- Median age today
- 38
- Peak year
- 1983
- Best rank
- 36th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,194th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 130,365 / 5,136
How old the living Lindsays are
born that year still alive today
Of the 135,501 babies given the name since 1880, about 129,000 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 5,400 of them are children and 2,100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1987 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 Lindsey in Lincolnshire, from Old English Lindesēġe, Lindesīġe (“Isle of Lind”), the Old English name of the city of Lincoln, Lincolnshire, in which "Lind" comes from the Common Brittonic form of the name of Lincoln and "isle" refers to Lincoln being surrounded by fenland; from cel-bry-pro *llɨnn (“pool”), from Proto-Celtic *lindos (“lake, liquid”), in reference to the Brayford + ; cf.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Lindsays
- Lindsay Lohan (born 1986)American actress and singer
- Lindsay Davenport (born 1976)American tennis player
- Lindsay Wagner (born 1949)American actress
- Lindsay Anderson (1923–1994)British feature-film, theatre and documentary director and film critic
- Lindsay Hoyle (born 1957)Speaker of the House of Commons
- Lindsay Duncan (born 1950)Scottish actress
- Lindsay Price (born 1976)American actress and singer
- Lindsay Crouse (born 1948)actress
People named Lindsay with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Lindsay is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Lindsay is most concentrated in New Hampshire (1.9×), Utah (1.8×), Delaware (1.8×), Connecticut (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1983
The most popular girls’ names the year Lindsay peaked:
Lindsay elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Lindsay | 8,975 | 172nd |
| Scotland girls | Lindsay | 2,794 | 42nd |
| Belgium girls | Lindsay | 939 | 100th |
| New Zealand boys | Lindsay | 883 | 58th |
| Ireland girls | Lindsay | 317 | 173rd |
| England and Wales girls | Lindsay | 296 | 506th |
| Scotland boys | Lindsay | 229 | 113th |
| Switzerland girls | Lindsay | 81 | 559th |
| France boys | Lindsay | 75 | 2,392nd |
| Northern Ireland girls | Lindsay | 8 | 204th |
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.
Lindsay: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Lindsay | 19 | 0.002% | 785th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Lindsay | 61 | 0.014% | 216th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Lindsay | 1 | 0.002% | 194th |
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.
Lindsay: rank by region
In 2016, Lindsay was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Lindsay | 506 | 5 |
In 2018, Lindsay was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Lindsay | 10 | 1 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names – 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.
Lindsay 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 | Lindsay | 7 | 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
Lindsay 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.