Humanverse

Letti vs Lettie

American parents have registered 11,097 Letties since 1880, against 599 Lettis. Lettie is still ahead, with 358 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Letti against Lettie, 1880 to 2025 0 100 200 300 400 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Letti Lettie

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

Lettie 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 2016, when Letti had 57 and Lettie had 106.

Side by side

  Letti Lettie
Total US births 59911,097
Most in one year 58358
Babies in 2025 36358
Estimated living today 6004,000
Median age today 612
Peak year 20212025
Best rank 2,892nd girls756th girls
Rank in 2025 3,975th756th
First recorded 19601880
Girls / boys 599 / 011,097 / 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 Letties alive today are over 12; half the Lettis are over 6. That is 6 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 Letti Lettie
England and Wales 52396

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: Letti and Lettie.