One subject, in depth · bridged to FuelFacts
NameCurve
Girls' name · 211,092 recorded births

Lily

#18 in the US in 2025

Where Lily stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#18girls’ names · US 2025

Lily was the 18th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 6,673 births.

peak 2011 · 8,192188019532025

Its moment was 2011, when 8,192 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#18US rank, 2025 (girls)
6,673US births in 2025
#15its best US rank, in 2011
2011peak year — 8,192 births
189,644US births since 1880
5,826NZ births since 1900
15,622E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Lily's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Lily was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Lily in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0233466
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Lily in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Lily in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Lily has been registered 5,826 times since 1900, peaking in 2010 with 280 births. It ranked #6 for girls in 2025 on 155 births.

19001920194019601980200020200.08001600
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Lily in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Lily in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Lily was registered 15,622 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2023 with 2,290 births. It ranked #2 for girls in 2025 on 2,249 births.

20200.0446893
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Lily in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#24041
1890#25496
1900#291126
1910#310154
1920#331386
1930#389305
1940#507186
1950#741135
1960#946127
1970#997125
1980#835187
1990#584396
2000#1242,733
2010#177,992
2020#355,258

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Lily most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California21,134
Texas13,341
New York11,576
Florida9,197
Pennsylvania7,773
Illinois6,814
Ohio6,369
Michigan5,684
North Carolina5,571
Massachusetts5,366

Questions about Lily

How popular is the name Lily?

Lily ranked #18 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 6,673 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Lily most popular?

Lily peaked in 2011, when 8,192 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Lily rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Lily has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 2011, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

See what every site in this family answers

Published by

Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.