Humanverse

Lyam vs Lyan

American parents have registered 2,077 Lyams since 1880, against 747 Lyans. Lyam is still ahead, with 198 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Lyam against Lyan, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Lyam Lyan

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 24 years in which either name was published, Lyam for 22 years and Lyan for 2 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Lyam Lyan
Total US births 2,077747
Most in one year 19880
Babies in 2025 19857
Estimated living today 2,100740
Median age today 65
Peak year 20242021
Best rank 1,092nd boys1,982nd boys
Rank in 2025 1,084th2,572nd
First recorded 20021992
Girls / boys 0 / 2,077114 / 633

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.

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 Lyam Lyan
France 17,705270
Belgium 1,44748
Switzerland 444309
England and Wales 10433

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: Lyam and Lyan.