Humanverse

Lindsay vs Linette

American parents have registered 135,501 Lindsays since 1880, against 4,285 Linettes. Lindsay is still ahead, with 84 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lindsay against Linette, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lindsay Linette

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 142 years in which either name was published, Lindsay for 135 years and Linette for 7 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Lindsay Linette
Total US births 135,5014,285
Most in one year 8,713156
Babies in 2025 846
Estimated living today 129,0003,900
Median age today 3852
Peak year 19831970
Best rank 36th girls860th girls
Rank in 2025 2,194th13,208th
First recorded 18801925
Girls / boys 130,365 / 5,1364,285 / 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 Linettes alive today are over 52; half the Lindsays are over 38. That is 14 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 Lindsay Linette
France 9,0501,055
England and Wales 2963

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: Lindsay and Linette.