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Lilia vs Lilly

American parents have registered 66,752 Lillys since 1880, against 14,319 Lilias. Lilly is still ahead, with 1,218 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lilia against Lilly, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lilia Lilly

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Lilly for 120 years and Lilia for 26 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Lilia Lilly
Total US births 14,31966,752
Most in one year 3152,891
Babies in 2025 3151,218
Estimated living today 12,00055,000
Median age today 2314
Peak year 20252010
Best rank 859th girls106th girls
Rank in 2025 859th252nd
First recorded 18841880
Girls / boys 14,314 / 566,728 / 24

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 Lilias alive today are over 23; half the Lillys are over 14. That is 9 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 Lilia Lilly
England and Wales 2,99622,050
France 13,2255,110
Poland 3,210782
Belgium 7161,152
Switzerland 3921,228
Scotland 971,419
Ireland 821,302
Northern Ireland 25293

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: Lilia and Lilly.