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Leni vs Lenora

American parents have registered 37,089 Lenoras since 1880, against 1,962 Lenis. Lenora is still ahead, with 562 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Leni against Lenora, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Leni Lenora

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

Lenora 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 2006, when Leni had 26 and Lenora had 38.

Side by side

  Leni Lenora
Total US births 1,96237,089
Most in one year 208678
Babies in 2025 197562
Estimated living today 1,90017,000
Median age today 562
Peak year 20231924
Best rank 1,195th girls252nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,173rd538th
First recorded 19381880
Girls / boys 1,935 / 2737,058 / 31

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 Lenoras alive today are over 62; half the Lenis are over 5. That is 57 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 Leni Lenora
France 2,310335
England and Wales 67291
Belgium 49210
Ireland 3512
Scotland 214

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: Leni and Lenora.