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Lila vs Lilianna

American parents have registered 76,550 Lilas since 1880, against 8,808 Liliannas. Lila is still ahead, with 1,670 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lila against Lilianna, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lila Lilianna

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

Lila 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 2003, when Lila had 492 and Lilianna had 196.

Side by side

  Lila Lilianna
Total US births 76,5508,808
Most in one year 1,969450
Babies in 2025 1,670300
Estimated living today 47,0008,700
Median age today 1512
Peak year 20102012
Best rank 155th girls633rd girls
Rank in 2025 186th890th
First recorded 18801980
Girls / boys 76,493 / 578,808 / 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 Lilas alive today are over 15; half the Liliannas are over 12. That is 3 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 Lila Lilianna
France 19,49560
Poland 2,14917,126
England and Wales 3,908814
Belgium 1,20410
Ireland 195104
Scotland 19753
Northern Ireland 12724

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: Lila and Lilianna.