Lewis
Lewis reached its high-water mark in 1921 at number 71, and has been recorded 156,636 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 433rd. About 63,000 Lewises are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 59.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Lewis boys named Lewis
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 156,636
- Estimated living today
- 63,000
- Median age today
- 59
- Peak year
- 1921
- Best rank
- 71st
- Rank in 2025
- 433rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 870 / 155,766
How old the living Lewises are
born that year still alive today
Of the 156,636 babies given the name since 1880, about 63,000 are alive — 40 in every hundred. Roughly 9,100 of them are children and 26,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1966 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Frankish
From Middle English Lewis, Lowis, from Anglo-Norman, from Old French Louis, from Frankish *Hlūdawīg.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Lewiss
- Lewis Carroll (1832–1898)British author and scholar
- Lewis Hamilton (born 1985)British racing driver
- Martin Lewis Perl (1927–2014)American scientist
- Lewis H. Morgan (1818–1881)American anthropologist
- Lewis Milestone (1895–1980)Russian-American film director
- Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology and literary critic
- Lewis Capaldi (born 1996)Scottish singer-songwriter
- Lewis Holtby (born 1990)German footballer
People named Lewis with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Lewis is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Lewis is most concentrated in West Virginia (2.5×), South Carolina (2.4×), Virginia (2.3×), Alabama (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1921
The most popular boys’ names the year Lewis peaked:
Lewis elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Lewis | 69,771 | 13th |
| Scotland boys | Lewis | 18,085 | 1st |
| France boys | Lewis +2 spellings | 3,390 | 238th |
| Belgium boys | Lewis | 3,240 | 22nd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Lewis | 1,844 | 20th |
| Ireland boys | Lewis | 998 | 126th |
| New Zealand boys | Lewis | 324 | 89th |
| Switzerland boys | Lewis | 293 | 333rd |
| Poland boys | Lewis | 15 birth registrations | 438th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Lewis: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Lewis | 228 | 0.018% | 297th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Lewis | 65 | 0.015% | 220th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Lewis is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.03% of children were given it – 83 of them.
Lewis: rank by region
In 2025, Lewis was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Lewis | 13 | 174 |
| Wallonia | Lewis | 177 | 16 |
| Brussels | Lewis | 225 | 6 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Lewis appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (10th), Province of Limburg (15th), Province of West Flanders (19th), Province of East Flanders (20th), Province of Flemish Brabant (31st), Province of Liège (133rd), Province of Hainaut (215th) and Brussels-Capital Region (225th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Lewis by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 10 | 443rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Lewis among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Lewis | 24 | 70 |
| Finland girls | Lewis | — | 7 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Lewis against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.