Humanverse

Lya vs Lyanna

American parents have registered 3,772 Lyannas since 1880, against 971 Lyas. Lyanna is still ahead, with 305 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lya against Lyanna, 1880 to 2025 0 125 250 375 500 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lya Lyanna

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 44 years in which either name was published, Lyanna for 39 years and Lya for 5 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

Side by side

  Lya Lyanna
Total US births 9713,772
Most in one year 64500
Babies in 2025 60305
Estimated living today 9603,700
Median age today 96
Peak year 20192019
Best rank 2,681st girls605th girls
Rank in 2025 2,822nd877th
First recorded 19681975
Girls / boys 971 / 03,772 / 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 Lyas alive today are over 9; half the Lyannas are over 6. That is 3 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 Lya Lyanna
France 15,8852,745
Belgium 807158
Switzerland 83172
England and Wales 66165

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: Lya and Lyanna.