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Laird vs Laith

American parents have registered 3,608 Laiths since 1880, against 1,902 Lairds. Laith is still ahead, with 266 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Laird against Laith, 1880 to 2025 0 80 160 240 320 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Laird Laith

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Of the 114 years in which either name was published, Laird for 71 years and Laith for 43 years. The lead changed hands 5 times.

Side by side

  Laird Laith
Total US births 1,9023,608
Most in one year 48266
Babies in 2025 under 5266
Estimated living today 1,1003,600
Median age today 589
Peak year 20062025
Best rank 2,513th boys893rd boys
Rank in 2025 unranked893rd
First recorded 18881969
Girls / boys 0 / 1,9020 / 3,608

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Lairds alive today are over 58; half the Laiths are over 9. That is 49 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Laird Laith
England and Wales 151,520

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Laird and Laith.