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Lidia vs Lydia

American parents have registered 187,317 Lydias since 1880, against 11,326 Lidias. Lydia is still ahead, with 2,692 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lidia against Lydia, 1880 to 2025 0 1k 2k 3k 4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lidia Lydia

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

Lydia 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 1973, when Lidia had 101 and Lydia had 677.

Side by side

  Lidia Lydia
Total US births 11,326187,317
Most in one year 2433,652
Babies in 2025 1322,692
Estimated living today 9,700139,000
Median age today 2923
Peak year 20082014
Best rank 1,076th girls84th girls
Rank in 2025 1,587th92nd
First recorded 18881880
Girls / boys 11,326 / 0187,039 / 278

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 Lidias alive today are over 29; half the Lydias are over 23. That is 6 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 Lidia Lydia
France 2,23532,235
England and Wales 63818,670
Poland 10,21152
Ireland 681,194
Norway 268838
Switzerland 266527
Belgium 91485
Scotland 12547

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: Lidia and Lydia.