Lisa

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Lisa boys named Lisa

By the numbers

Total US births

970,012

Estimated living today

876,000

Median age today

57

Peak year

1965

Best rank

1st

Rank in 2025

987th

First recorded

1886

Girls / boys

967,229 / 2,783

How old the living Lisas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 970,012 babies given the name since 1886, about 876,000 are alive — 90 in every hundred. Roughly 6,000 of them are children and 109,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1968 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 Hebrew

Diminutive of Elisabeth in several European languages. The computer is named after Lisa Brennan-Jobs, officially explained as an acronym for “Locally Integrated Software Architecture”.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Lisas

• Lisa Gerrard (born 1961)Australian musician, singer and composer
• Lisa (born 1997)Thai rapper, singer, model, dancer and actress
• Lisa Kudrow (born 1963)American actress
• Lisa Marie Presley (1968–2023)American singer-songwriter
• Lisa del Giocondo (1479–1542)subject of the Mona Lisa
• Lisa Edelstein (born 1966)American actress
• Lisa Ann (born 1972)American pornographic actress
• Lisa Murkowski (born 1957)United States Senator from Alaska since 2002

People named Lisa with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Lisa is most common

• CA95,082
• NY87,617
• PA59,674
• OH54,602
• IL50,078
• TX49,667
• MI44,692
• NJ33,692
• MA33,284
• IN27,208

Relative to how many babies each state records, Lisa is most concentrated in Rhode Island (1.5×), Connecticut (1.5×), Delaware (1.5×), Massachusetts (1.4×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1965

The most popular girls’ names the year Lisa peaked:

• Lisa
• Mary
• Karen
• Kimberly
• Susan
• Patricia

All the names of 1965

Lisa elsewhere

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.

Lisa: births by region

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, Lisa is most concentrated in Nidwalden, where 0.47% of children were given it – 42 of them.

Lisa: rank by region

In 2025, Lisa was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

In 2021, Lisa was among the 10 most common names in 2 regions of Italy.

In 2025, Lisa was given 2 times or more in 5 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Lisa appears in the lists for Province of Walloon Brabant (50th), Province of Liège (98th), Brussels-Capital Region (159th) and Province of Antwerp (204th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 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.

Lisa by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Lisa 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.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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.

Where Lisa lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 1,186 women called Lisa were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 29 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 23 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Lisette
• Lissette
• Lisbeth
• Lissa
• Lise
• Lisandro
• Lisha
• Lisamarie
• Lisandra
• Lisset
• Lisabeth
• Liset

Lisa against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Lisa vs Lisette
• Lisa vs Lissette
• Lisa vs Lisbeth
• Lisa vs Lissa
• Lisa vs Lise
• Lisa vs Lisandro

Compare Lisa with a name of your own