Humanverse

Leva vs Levi

American parents have registered 216,440 Levis since 1880, against 823 Levas. Levi is still ahead, with 9,713 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Leva against Levi, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Leva Levi

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

Levi 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 1901, when Leva had 20 and Levi had 41.

Side by side

  Leva Levi
Total US births 823216,440
Most in one year 339,936
Babies in 2025 79,713
Estimated living today 110203,000
Median age today 7511
Peak year 19212022
Best rank 1,409th girls12th boys
Rank in 2025 11,932nd12th
First recorded 18831880
Girls / boys 823 / 01,427 / 215,013

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 Levas alive today are over 75; half the Levis are over 11. That is 64 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 Leva Levi
France 10 Léva2,090

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: Leva and Levi.