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Louie vs Louis

American parents have registered 409,317 Louises since 1880, against 33,338 Louies. Louis is still ahead, with 1,397 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Louie against Louis, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Louie Louis

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

Louis 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 2025, when Louie had 516 and Louis had 1,397.

Side by side

  Louie Louis
Total US births 33,338409,317
Most in one year 5177,296
Babies in 2025 5161,397
Estimated living today 16,000169,000
Median age today 4758
Peak year 20241921
Best rank 573rd boys29th boys
Rank in 2025 596th249th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 2,346 / 30,9922,847 / 406,470

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 Louises alive today are over 58; half the Louies are over 47. That is 11 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 Louie Louis
France 80542,270
England and Wales 25,68636,928
Belgium 32016,230
Switzerland 6155,435
Scotland 1,2082,195
Ireland 5332,143
New Zealand 4491,346
Northern Ireland 317592
Norway 93458
Poland 7315

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: Louie and Louis.