Humanverse

Lila vs Lilith

American parents have registered 76,550 Lilas since 1880, against 13,534 Liliths. Lila is still ahead, with 1,670 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lila Lilith

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 2023, when Lila had 1,401 and Lilith had 1,300.

Side by side

  Lila Lilith
Total US births 76,55013,534
Most in one year 1,9691,300
Babies in 2025 1,6701,111
Estimated living today 47,00013,000
Median age today 155
Peak year 20102023
Best rank 155th girls232nd girls
Rank in 2025 186th277th
First recorded 18801913
Girls / boys 76,493 / 5713,534 / 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 Liliths are over 5. That is 10 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 Lilith
France 19,495450
England and Wales 3,9081,063
Poland 2,14918
Belgium 1,204155
Switzerland 448195
Scotland 19770
Ireland 19532
Northern Ireland 1278

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 Lilith.