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Laurance vs Laurie

American parents have registered 168,442 Lauries since 1880, against 1,937 Laurances. Laurie is still ahead, with 60 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Laurance against Laurie, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Laurance Laurie

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, Laurie for 140 years and Laurance for 2 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

Side by side

  Laurance Laurie
Total US births 1,937168,442
Most in one year 4710,706
Babies in 2025 under 560
Estimated living today 910144,000
Median age today 6562
Peak year 19561962
Best rank 1,106th boys42nd girls
Rank in 2025 unranked2,822nd
First recorded 18851882
Girls / boys 5 / 1,932166,488 / 1,954

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 Laurances alive today are over 65; half the Lauries are over 62. That is 3 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 Laurance Laurie
France 529,795
England and Wales 121,973
Ireland 8152

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: Laurance and Laurie.