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Lila vs Lilliana

American parents have registered 76,550 Lilas since 1880, against 22,826 Lillianas. Lila is still ahead, with 1,670 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lila Lilliana

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 2018, when Lila had 1,405 and Lilliana had 1,081.

Side by side

  Lila Lilliana
Total US births 76,55022,826
Most in one year 1,9691,230
Babies in 2025 1,670695
Estimated living today 47,00023,000
Median age today 1511
Peak year 20102013
Best rank 155th girls262nd girls
Rank in 2025 186th445th
First recorded 18801955
Girls / boys 76,493 / 5722,826 / 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 Lillianas are over 11. That is 4 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 Lilliana
France 19,49530
England and Wales 3,908613
Poland 2,14959
Ireland 19512
Scotland 1976

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 Lilliana.