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Lucien vs Lucille

American parents have registered 233,321 Lucilles since 1880, against 9,998 Luciens. Lucille is still ahead, with 1,314 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Lucien Lucille

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

Lucille 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 1880, when Lucien had 19 and Lucille had 40.

Side by side

  Lucien Lucille
Total US births 9,998233,321
Most in one year 2658,006
Babies in 2025 2651,314
Estimated living today 6,00057,000
Median age today 1667
Peak year 20251920
Best rank 897th boys29th girls
Rank in 2025 897th237th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 5 / 9,993232,571 / 750

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 Lucilles alive today are over 67; half the Luciens are over 16. That is 51 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 Lucien Lucille
France 219,7009,390
Belgium 1,818310
England and Wales 789464
Switzerland 1,08983
Ireland 356
Scotland 1841

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: Lucien and Lucille.