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Leah vs Leander

American parents have registered 256,954 Leahs since 1880, against 6,956 Leanders. Leah is still ahead, with 3,880 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Leah against Leander, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Leah Leander

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

Leah has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1882, when Leah had 56 and Leander had 28.

Side by side

  Leah Leander
Total US births 256,9546,956
Most in one year 6,799122
Babies in 2025 3,880122
Estimated living today 233,0004,000
Median age today 2336
Peak year 20092025
Best rank 29th girls1,459th boys
Rank in 2025 58th1,459th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 256,488 / 46628 / 6,928

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 Leanders alive today are over 36; half the Leahs are over 23. That is 13 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 Leah Leander
England and Wales 33,458208
Norway 5,1622,748
Scotland 4,7483
Belgium 6281,069
France 1,62520
Switzerland 375311
Poland 1617

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: Leah and Leander.