Humanverse

Lee vs Leeana

American parents have registered 295,926 Lees since 1880, against 822 Leeanas. Lee is still ahead, with 387 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lee against Leeana, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lee Leeana

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

Lee 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 2011, when Lee had 373 and Leeana had 35.

Side by side

  Lee Leeana
Total US births 295,926822
Most in one year 5,44835
Babies in 2025 38711
Estimated living today 163,000810
Median age today 5917
Peak year 19512011
Best rank 92nd boys4,151st girls
Rank in 2025 725th8,860th
First recorded 18801967
Girls / boys 62,299 / 233,627822 / 0

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 Lees alive today are over 59; half the Leeanas are over 17. That is 42 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 Lee Leeana
France 56530

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: Lee and Leeana.