Humanverse

Lenon vs Lenora

American parents have registered 37,089 Lenoras since 1880, against 518 Lenons. Lenora is still ahead, with 562 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lenon 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 1991, when Lenon had 5 and Lenora had 73.

Side by side

  Lenon Lenora
Total US births 51837,089
Most in one year 17678
Babies in 2025 under 5562
Estimated living today 17017,000
Median age today 6962
Peak year 19321924
Best rank 1,777th boys252nd girls
Rank in 2025 unranked538th
First recorded 19031880
Girls / boys 0 / 51837,058 / 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 Lenons alive today are over 69; half the Lenoras are over 62. That is 7 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Lenon Lenora
England and Wales 791

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: Lenon and Lenora.