Humanverse

Lana vs Lanie

American parents have registered 57,449 Lanas since 1880, against 5,637 Lanies. Lana is still ahead, with 768 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lana against Lanie, 1880 to 2025 0 400 800 1.2k 1.6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lana Lanie

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 142 years in which either name was published, Lana for 118 years and Lanie for 24 years. The lead changed hands 13 times.

6 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Lana Lanie
Total US births 57,4495,637
Most in one year 1,470225
Babies in 2025 76883
Estimated living today 49,0005,000
Median age today 4819
Peak year 19482006
Best rank 188th girls1,110th girls
Rank in 2025 406th2,214th
First recorded 18851880
Girls / boys 57,434 / 155,602 / 35

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 Lanas alive today are over 48; half the Lanies are over 19. That is 29 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 Lana Lanie
France 28,0605
England and Wales 5,24275

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: Lana and Lanie.