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Lukas vs Luke

American parents have registered 323,585 Lukes since 1880, against 44,072 Lukases. Luke is still ahead, with 6,957 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lukas against Luke, 1880 to 2025 0 3k 6k 9k 12k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lukas Luke

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

Luke 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 2020, when Lukas had 1,711 and Luke had 7,790.

Side by side

  Lukas Luke
Total US births 44,072323,585
Most in one year 1,78710,536
Babies in 2025 1,1616,957
Estimated living today 43,000310,000
Median age today 1418
Peak year 20192014
Best rank 214th boys28th boys
Rank in 2025 288th33rd
First recorded 19631880
Girls / boys 19 / 44,053565 / 323,020

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 Lukes alive today are over 18; half the Lukases are over 14. 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 Lukas Luke
England and Wales 5,07372,627
Ireland 60114,849
France 9,6451,815
New Zealand 708,846
Scotland 3985,803
Switzerland 5,142484
Norway 5,03040
Belgium 4,504145
Northern Ireland 1913,064
Poland 66884

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: Lukas and Luke.